Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — INDUSTRY

European Economic Community

Mr. George Gardiner: asked the Secretary of State for Industry what further consultations he has had with the CBI on the question of Great Britain's membership of the EEC.

The Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn): The CBI has not sought consultations with me on this issue though I know its views and I am always willing to have discussions with it if it wishes.

Mr. Gardiner: Will the right hon. Gentleman now consider drawing together all the views and representations he has received on this question for publica-

tion, together with his comments, so that we can all be better informed on the merits of the Common Market question? Furthermore, can he say whether, of all the representations he has received from individual industries and trade associations, there is one industry which believes that it would be better off outside the European Community rather than inside it?

Mr. Benn: I do not think it is for me to act as a point of collection of public expression and views on this matter since it concerns many Departments, and, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the decision will be taken not by me or the Cabinet but by the British people through the ballot box. As to the views of industry, this depends entirely on how one defines the term "industry". The TUC and the unions composing it have already expressed their views on the matter and these will be taken into account.

Mr. Jay: Has my right hon. Friend noticed that the TUC has been consistently right in its forecasts of the economic effects of membership, particularly on the trade balance, and that the CBI has been consistently wrong?

Mr. Benn: Though I am tempted by my right hon. Friend, I would not want to set myself up as a judge between those two bodies as to the accuracy of their forecasts. But the CBI and the TUC will both be able to express their views to the British people on the occasion when the British people reach a decision.

Mr. Gordon Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there are not always benefits which flow from the EEC and, in particular, that an application has been made by the British Steel Corporation to the EEC for permission to acquire the firm of Johnson Firth Brown, and that this application has been successful on condition that there will be a disposal of the assets of Beardmore, which is a member of the group? Is he further aware that as a result of the restricted permission given by the EEC and its unwarranted interference in the industrial affairs of the United Kingdom 1,200 jobs may be lost to the Scottish steel industry?

Mr. Benn: I am well aware of the case, but there is another question on the Order Paper relating to the BSC and I may have an opportunity to answer this point later. However, it is true that in taking Britain into the EEC the Conservative Government handed over to the Commission effective power over the British steel industry.

Mr. Heseltine: If the right hon. Gentleman does not think that it is his task to represent industry's views within the Government on this critical matter, which Minister does he think should do so?

Mr. Benn: British industrialists have not been slow in putting their views forward, and I doubt whether the CBI would welcome me as an advocate of its views. The Conservative Government having broken their clear pledge that the full-hearted consent of the British Parliament and people would be obtained, the Tories should now recognise for the first time that they should address themselves to the British people, who have the final decision to make.

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Industry what representations he has received from industrialists concerning United Kingdom membership of the EEC.

Mr. Benn: My Department has received many representations directly from industrialists and through their respective trade associations.

Mr. Hamilton: Can my right hon. Friend confirm the figures given by the

Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Labour Party Conference that, whatever we may think about private enterprise, seven out of every 10 jobs in this country are within the private sector and that the majority of those industrialists want to stay within the EEC, and not least the Scottish industrialists? Does my right hon. Friend go along with the Prime Minister's view, and, in the event, as seems likely now, that we shall get favourable terms in our renegotiation, will he join the Prime Minister in recommending our maintaining membership of the EEC?

Mr. Benn: I fully support every word said by the Prime Minister in his recent speech on this matter, including the fact that the decision will be taken by the British people.

Mr. Adley: The Secretary of State said just now that it was not the management of the British Steel Corporation which would take the decision but that it was for him and Parliament. By what means other than through him does the industry to which the hon. Member for Wife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) has just referred have to make representations in order to ensure that they are listened to with the due attention that they deserve in view of the numbers of people the industry employs?

Mr. Benn: Dr. Finniston will have one vote in the ballot box, like the hon. Gentleman and myself.

Mr. Skinner: Will my right hon. Friend make it absolutely clear to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) that the referendum is not to be restricted to people like those he mentioned—to industrialists and to the 89 who on 28th October 1971 brought us to these sorry days?

Mr. Benn: I do not think I should be tempted by my hon. Friend to go into the background. The plain truth is that the British people are now to be given the right to make this decision. It was on this basis that all my hon. Friends and I were elected to Parliament, and this is the debt of honour that we owe to the people to whom we gave that pledge.

Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering

Mr. Trotter: asked the Secretary of State for Industry whether he is yet able to estimate the cost to public funds of acquiring the shipbuilding, ship repairing and marine engineering industries.

The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Michael Meacher): No, Sir. Though the Government have, of course, made their own estimates of the likely cost of nationalisation on a range of possible assumptions, it will not be practicable to make an estimate of the actual cost until the basis of compensation has been decided.

Mr. Trotter: Will the hon. Gentleman explain to the hard-up public why he insists on spending his time and millions of pounds of their money on taking over such prosperous concerns as Swan Hunter, Yarrow, Vosper and Scott Lithgow? Does he not agree that his time would be better spent on trying to prevent other firms from going bust?

Mr. Meacher: It is impossible to get the industry-wide planning in shipbuilding which the Shipbuilders and Repairers National Association wants unless all the relevant companies are taken into public control. I point out to the hon. Gentleman, however, that no other world shipbuilding industry over the past 25 years has had complete stagnation in output at the same time as world output has increased five times. That is a situation which nationalisation will change.

Dr. Dickson Mabon: Does my hon. Friend intend to put this information and other matters into a White Paper, or, in view of the parliamentary timetable, is there not to be a White Paper but rather a Bill introduced reasonably soon in view of the uncertainty hanging over investment plans in the industry?

Mr. Meacher: My hon. Friend is entirely right to put the emphasis on bringing forward a Bill at the earliest possible moment in view of the uncertainty in the transition to public ownership. Because of the narrowness of the time scale between completion of consultations and introduction of a Bill, I cannot guarantee that there will be a White Paper, but our proposals will be

fully presented to the House with the arguments behind them.

Mr. Grylls: Can the hon. Gentleman say who is to run these industries more efficiently than the present management?

Mr. Meacher: The efficiency of the existing companies is very difficult to understand when they have needed no less than £155 million since 1965 in order to stay afloat, and they are still asking for more money now. No industry has failed to modernise to the same degree as the shipbuilding industry of this country, and I am fully certain that if this industry is under public control those who run it under public control will give it the investment that is required.

Steel Industry

Mr. Ashley: asked the Secretary of State for Industry if he will now make a further statement about the future of the steel industry.

Mr. Benn: My right hon. and noble Friend the Minister of State has made considerable progress with his review of the British Steel Corporation's closure proposals. I am not yet in a position to make a statement but will do so as soon as possible.

Mr. Ashley: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his statement that the safeguarding of jobs is the primary objective of the social contract was warmly welcomed on this side of the House and that the 2,000 steel workers in the Shelton Steelworks at Stoke-on-Trent are looking with great confidence to him to safeguard their jobs and remove the threat of unemployment held over them by the Conservatives when they were in office?

Mr. Benn: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for putting forward the views of the Shelton steelworkers whom I met when in opposition and with whom my noble Friend has kept in close contact. I assure my hon. Friends that all the discussions that have taken place have been designed to bring out the full weight of the arguments put forward by those who might be affected by the corporation's closure proposals.

Sir A. Meyer: Is the Secretary of State aware that, although there will be a very wide measure of approval for the great care with which the Government are


examining the proposed closures, uncertainty is extremely damaging? Will he do everything he can to accelerate a decision?

Mr. Benn: I appreciate the problem of delay, although, in fairness, the hon. Gentleman will recognise that the joint steering group set up by the previous Government delayed the corporation's original investment plan by about two years. In the event we have authorised Redcar IIB, and there is only one other steel proposal before us now—that for Port Talbot—and that has been before us for only two weeks. We are trying to reconcile all the considerations with the closures the BSC has proposed.

Mr. Blaker: asked the Secretary of State for Industry what loans and grant have been approved by the European Communities for projects in the steel industry since 1st January 1973.

Mr. Benn: Since 1st January 1973 the European Commission has approved loans to the United Kingdom steel industry amounting to £41·85 million and grants in aid of steel research amounting to about £760,000. In addition the European Investment Bank has approved loans for steel projects amounting to £488 million. Loans and grants received to date amount in total to some £48 million.
Against this must be set some £8·2 million in payments by the United Kingdom to end-1974 under the steel levy, £17·9 million in entry fee in respect of the coal and steel industries and in addition the United Kingdom has contributed some £46 million to the capital and resources of the EIB.

Mr. Blaker: Will the Secretary of State confirm that most of these loans have been obtained at rates of interest which are several percentage points lower than the rates which would have had to be paid in normal circumstances on the open market? Is there any guarantee that if we were to leave the European Community we would not have to repay these loans without delay?

Mr. Benn: I take the point the hon. Gentleman makes, but he will not be under any misapprehension that the United Kingdom's net contribution is greater than the receipts and, therefore,

this is part of a general arrangement and links inevitably with wider discussions that are going on in connection with renegotiation.

Mr. Hooley: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the European Communities are seeking to interfere with the freedom of the British Steel Corporation to expand its activities in highly desirable directions, and will he resist this tendency?

Mr. Benn: It is true that the European Commission, under powers derived from the treaties, has laid down as a condition that a British Steel Corporation acquisition of Johnson Firth Brown must be followed by a divestment of Beardmore in Glasgow and of the Manchester mill, and this raises very serious problems— not for me, but for Parliament.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: As we are dealing with the steel industry, will the Secretary of State confirm that the BSC itself wishes to remain within the European Community? In the light of that, why does the Secretary of State want us to come out?

Mr. Benn: The hon. Gentleman, as usual, has got it totally wrong. The BSC is a public agency accountable to the House of Commons, as I am. My responsibility is to Parliament and I am, along with the members of the Cabinet of which I am proud to be a member, renegotiating in good faith for the British people to reach the final decision.

Shotton Steelworks

Mr. Peter Morrison: asked the Secreary of State for Industry if he will now make a statement as to the future of the steel-making process at the Shotton steelworks.

Mr. Meacher: As I told the hon. Member on 4th November, my right hon. and noble Friend the Minister of State is carefully considering the many representations made to him. An announcement will be made as soon as possible.

Mr. Morrison: Is the Minister aware that further delays like this will not do and that such delays can only give the impression that he and the Government could not care less about the personal worries of families who, depending on the


Government's decision, might or might not have a job?

Mr. Meacher: I think that the workers at Shotton, as elsewhere, who were left with the prospect of 6,000 redundancies if the steel plans that were approved by the last Government went ahead, will be be only too grateful if there is some delay, provided that there is some remission later.

Mr. Golding: Is the Minister aware that his noble Friend raised the expectation that there would be an announcement this year and that if the steel workers are not to hear the announcement this year they should be told how long it will be before they can have the decision?

Mr. Meacher: I fully appreciate the anxieties which are felt about an early decision, but a large mass of conflicting evidence has been put before my noble Friend in the course of his inquiries and there are a great deal of interconnections in the general steel strategy, involving the Scottish closures, to which my right noble Friend is now turning his urgent attention.

Norton Villiers Triumph

Mr. Stanley: asked the Secretary of State for Industry what assistance he is going to offer to the Meriden Workers' Co-operative and to Norton Villiers Triumph Ltd. under the Industry Act 1972; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Hordern: asked the Secretary of State for Industry if he has any further proposals for the Triumph Norton Villiers works at Meriden; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Norman Lamont: asked the Secretary of State for Industry whether he will make a further statement about the Meriden Workers' Co-operative for the manufacture of Triumph motor cycles.

Mrs. Renée Short: asked the Secretary of State for Industry if he will make a statement about the future of Norton Villiers Triumph, Wolverhampton.

Mr. Benn: The conclusion of the negotiations between NVT and the proposed workers' co-operative at Meriden relating to the offer of assistance to the co-operative which I announced on 29th July was

made dependent by NVT on the acquiesence of the workers at NVT Birmingham, which was not forthcoming. I am now considering fresh proposals submitted by NVT and the trade unions concerned. Meanwhile the offer to Meriden still stands and is acceptable to the workers at NVT, Wolverhampton.

Mr. Stanley: If the right. hon. Gentleman should decide in the next few days to seek the consent of the House for a greater contribution of public funds to NVT than the £4·82 million arranged in 1973, will he acknowledge that that greater liability will have arisen directly and solely on account of his personal determination to sustain at public expense a non-viable workers' co-operative even if it means jeopardising the rest of the motor cycle industry?

Mr. Benn: The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong in that analysis. The tragic and unnecessary decline in the British motor cycle industry was accelerated by the foolish decision of the previous Government to assent to an arrangement which led to the closure at Meriden. Even the previous Government had begun discussions with the workers at Meriden about a possible co-operative. I believe that if all three plants could produce, as they could, the equivalent of only 15 days' output alone by Honda in Japan, there is scope for seeing whether we can make a better go of this industry.

Mrs. Short: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Wolverhampton works employs about 1,500 people, many of whom are my constituents, and that they are very concerned about the future of the industry, particularly about the hardships suffered by the workers at the Meriden works for such a long time? Is my right hon. Friend further aware that they are very anxious to see that representatives of workers from the three factories are brought together to hammer out an agreement for the organisation of the three factories? Is he aware that they have great confidence in the future of the British motor cycle industry and feel that they have a great contribution to make to its future? Will he act on these lines as soon as possible?

Mr. Benn: I share my hon. Friend's confidence that this industry has a much greater part to play in our own industrial


performance and in exports than it has been able to play, for one reason or another, over the last few years.
After my meeting in Small Heath I undertook to the workers that I would consider what they said to me, which derives from their anxieties. The unions are setting up tripartite meetings to bring together workers from the three plants, and I look forward to receiving their representations. To divide the workers in this industry at this time would be a great and unnecessary tragedy.

Mr. Lamont: Is the Secretary of State aware that the answer which he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Ton-bridge and Mailing (Mr. Stanley) ignores the fundamental realities of the situation? Is it not the case that the history of the Meriden plant has been one of low productivity and continual interruptions to production—

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: Rubbish!

Mr. Lamont: —and that that has had a bad effect on the British motor cycle industry? Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that, unless that fact is recognised, this attempt to save the industry will go down the same road as all other attempts have gone?

Mr. Benn: The hon. Gentleman puts forward a view which I cannot accept and which I do not believe the facts justify. The British motor cycle industry, which was world famous, has progressively declined. At this moment, with the world energy crisis leading to a demand for motor cycles, as a nation we are unable, for reasons which we need not go into now, to meet this demand. There is nothing whatsoever wrong in the Government turning their mind to see how we can re-enter that market and how we can acquire a share in it, which properly belongs to the skilled workers who produce the cycles.

Mr. Tomlinson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that a large number of Opposition Members would rather see the Meriden co-operative fail as an exercise in worker participation than see it succeed? Does he accept that they are putting obstacles in its way by making outrageous accusations about labour relations in the past? Is it not a fact that there is a tremendous demand for the product from the Meriden motor-cycle

works and that if this situation is not resolved quickly the valuable American market will be lost?

Mr. Benn: I share my hon. Friend's views about the market. This industry, first under Sir Bernard Docker and then under Lord Shawcross, employing various consultants some of whom said that we should close down Small Heath in 1971 and that we should close down Meriden in 1973, has never had a chance to develop its capability. I intend to see whether the possibility is open to the industry.

Mr. Heseltine: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if he delays much longer there will be no industry left to seize the opportunities of which he is talking? Will he confirm what he well knows, that the right hon. Christopher Chataway, the former Minister for Industrial Development, made it clear that he would not support a works' co-operative, and that the reason why the Secretary of State is considering proposals from NVT for the nationalisation of the industry is that NVT can see no other way forwards, in view of the intervention by the right hon. Gentleman which has brought the industry to a situation in which there is no other way forward?

Mr. Benn: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. Let me make it clear that the offer I made to the Meriden co-operative in the summer is still open. It is open to NVT now—in the light of what I have said today about our interest in considering proposals which have come forward from the company and from the workers, as we are doing—to establish this industry on a three-plant basis. We have undertaken to consider very seriously NVT's corporate plans, which has been before us in outline, and also the proposals which have come from the three groups of workers meeting together. It will be possible to make a fresh start if the three-plant beginning can take place with the Meriden co-operative against the background of those studies.

Mr. Huckfield: Is my right hon Friend aware that the real failure of Meriden has been the failure of management to ensure that the factory has an adequate supply of component parts? Is he further aware that many of my constituents who have been occupying the factory since September 1973, many of whom have given everything because they want


to make motor cycles, are grateful for the attitude he has adopted throughout? Does he accept that this is a project for a worker co-operative which has been given detailed and careful study and research, and that at least it deserves to be given a chance to show that workers have a rôle to play in running their factories?

Mr. Benn: On the subject of workers' co-operatives, my hon. Friend knows my view and the interest which I have taken. Despite the sharp words which have been uttered this afternoon, I hope the House will think it right to endorse the idea that the industry should be given a fresh start on a three-plant basis with the good will of the people concerned, given the fact that it is an industry in which Britain could do very much better than, for whatever reason, it has been able to do in the past.

Planning Agreements

Dr. Hampson: asked the Secretary of State for Industry when he intends to publish details of his proposed planning agreements with industry.

Mr. Moonman: asked the Secretary of State for Industry when he intends to publish details of his proposed planning agreements with industry.

The Minister of State, Department of Industry (Mr. Eric S. Heffer): We are at present engaged in the consultations on planning agreements with both sides of industry which were promised in the White Paper. We shall be able to give a fuller explanation of the proposals when the Industry Bill is before the House.

Dr. Hampson: I am sure that the Minister has given some thought to the general objectives. Will he, therefore, say whether his Department will collect information so that Ministers will be better informed about private industry, or will the development and investment plans of companies be scrutinised in the light of ministerially-determined tests of acceptability?

Mr. Heffer: The White Paper clearly outlines the whole procedure by which planning agreements will be proceeded with, and at this stage, until the proposals are actually published, I cannot go beyond that.

Mr. Moonman: In view of the perhaps ambiguous way in which planning agreements were initiated, and to overcome this, in the light of what we know to be my hon. Friend's great concern to see that they are successful, has my hon. Friend contacted ICI, which has had considerable experience of planning agreements? Also, what rôle does my hon. Friend see Sir Don Ryder playing in the possible integration of some of these planning agreements?

Mr. Heffer: My right hon. Friend has had consultations and discussions with representatives of ICI, and continuing discussions are taking place with representatives of the CBI, of industry in general and of the TUC. I assure the House that the fullest consultations are taking place.

Mr. Rost: Who will take the decisions from now on—the Secretary of State or Sir Don Ryder?

Mr. Heffer: My right hon. Friend is responsible to the House as Minister. Sir Don Ryder has been appointed as an industrial adviser in the Cabinet Office.

Mr. John Garrett: Will my hon. Friend confirm that the planning agreement system will be voluntary? If that be so, will he tell us how he plans to enforce the accountability of private industry for the use it makes of public funds?

Mr. Heffer: The planning agreements will be voluntary. We have explained this from the word "Go", contrary to what Opposition Members believe. The whole question of the future investment and location of industry will be decided through the planning agreement system between the Government and the various industrialists concerned. No industrialist need enter into any discussions with the Government on this matter. I assure the House that it will be a voluntary arrangement, although I am sure that, once industry understands the benefits to be gained from it, many industrialists will be only too happy to participate.

Mr. Heseltine: Will it not be slightly embarrassing for the Secretary of State if he has to accept the responsibility and the chief industrial adviser to the Government is in the Cabinet Office?

Mr. Heffer: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will not be embarrassed by


anything, neither by anything that Sir Don Ryder may tell him nor by any of the advice which he is constantly getting from the Opposition. My right hon. Friend is quite capable of dealing with all situations when they arise.

Johnson Firth Brown, Sheffield

Mr. Hooley: asked the Secretary of State for Industry if he will take steps to acquire for the public the 35 per cent. share in the Sheffield engineering steel and wire groups of Johnson Firth Brown which has been put on the market by Mr. Oliver Jessel.

Mr. Benn: This is one of the possibilities which I am considering with the British Steel Corporation, Johnson Firth Brown and the work forces concerned.

Mr. Hooley: Does not the collapse of the Jessel empire provide an important opportunity for extending public ownership into the special steel sector of the industry? Has my right hon. Friend had opportunity to consider in detail the proposals put forward by the workers at Johnson Firth Brown, and will he resist any attempt by the European Commission to interfere in this matter?

Mr. Benn: I agree with what my hon. Friend says about the merits of an arrangement opened up by the situation in Jessel Securities. The papers prepared by the workers in Johnson Firth Brown are excellent documents reflecting a high degree of study. As to the steel question generally, I have already dealt with this in the House and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister dealt with steel in his speech on Saturday.

Mr. Jessel: As a close relative of someone who has come under a great deal of personal criticism in this matter, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is aware that relations between the unions and management in this group have improved out of all recognition under the present management, that the unions have expressed opposition to any change of ownership and that, now this has become inevitable, there is no enthusiasm on their part to be taken over by the British Steel Corporation, and that in any case the European Commission at Brussels has ruled it out unless the major plants at Manchester and Glasgow

are hived off from the rest? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that two or three other groups have expressed interest in taking over this holding?

Mr. Benn: I am aware of all of that except the hon. Gentleman's relationship with the person concerned. I have made no attack upon him, and I hope he will accept from me that I do not see these issues as personal matters of any kind. We are considering here the future of this part of the British steel industry. Even in relation to the hon. Gentleman's comment about the Commission in Brussels my concern is that we should retain for Parliament the powers necessary to pursue effective industrial policies, a phrase which the Prime Minister reiterated in his speech on Saturday. Within that framework, we are trying to do the best that can be done in conjunction with the people most directly concerned.

Mr. Duffy: Does my right hon. Friend recall the meeting which he had a month ago with a deputation of shop stewards from Johnson Firth Brown and their urgent recommendation to him that he should take their group into a public steel group independent of the BSC? Does not my right hon. Friend think that the EEC's conditions for a BSC take-over now point conclusively in the direction induicated by the Johnson Firth Brown shop stewards, and that the fears on competition policy in our own private sector and in Brussels can be readily set at rest only by his creating an independent public steel group for the Johnson Firth Brown group?

Mr. Benn: I recall the visit which my hon. Friend paid to me with workers from the firm concerned. I received from them the memorandum to which I have already referred. I have very much in mind the objective to which my hon. Friend refers, and in giving my answer today I hoped to give gentle encouragement to that broad objective.

Mr. Michael Marshall: Will the Secretary of State realise that this is a highly successful company, that there are possibilities of selling it to other bidders in the private sector and that if this were done there would be opportunity to retain the group in its present form and without its hiving off, thus meeting the wishes and


fears of many of the work force, both management and labour, who are worried about becoming part of the British Steel Corporation's rationalisation?

Mr. Benn: The hiving off to which the hon. Gentleman refers is a hiving off which the European Commission seeks to impose upon us. It is not a hiving off which has played any part whatever in our own thinking on this matter. I am bound to have regard to the concerns of the people who make the special steel. After all, we must not speak of industry as though it could be confined solely to the interests of those who own industry. We must have in mind the people who work in industry when we reach solutions to problems of this character.

Ferranti

Mr. Robin F. Cook: asked the Secretary of State for Industry when he expects to make a statement on future Government assistance to Ferranti.

Mr. Meacher: We shall make a statement on the form of future Government assistance to Ferranti after the various possibilities have been discussed with the employees and the management of the company. We hope to begin such discussions shortly.

Mr. Cook: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Has the Secretary of State received the report by Peat Marwick Mitchell and Co. on the finances of the company? If he has, how much longer does the Department intend to continue its investigations following that report? In particular, will my hon. Friend note the strong opposition of the work force in Ferranti to the take-over of any part of that company by GEC or Plessey because of their anxiety that this would lead only to redundancy?

Mr. Meacher: The initial accountant's report has been received, and a statement is being postponed only prior to discussions with both sides of the company, since both the divisional structure and the finances of the company are highly complex. I assure my hon. Friend that a statement will be made shortly. With regard to preservation of employment and the retention of the company as an integrated concern, these desires were strongly expressed at the original tripartite meeting held by my right hon.

Friend with both sides, and they are considerations which we shall take fully into account in presenting our final proposals.

Mr. Tom King: Is the hon. Gentleman's Department the only one with a bottomless purse? In view of the urgent need for funds to sustain employment in certain areas such as Ferranti, is it not clear that the Department will be under such financial pressure that it can no longer afford to indulge such whims as the nationalisation of shipbuilding and the aircraft industry, and should not these be dropped forthwith?

Mr. Meacher: In the first place, there have been two General Elections in which those were part of the programme put before the electorate by the Labour Party. We received a mandate to continue with both those policies, and we intend to carry them out. As for the reasons for nationalising shipbuilding and the aircraft industry, I have already dealt with the question of shipbuilding, when I made perfectly clear that it was in the long-term financial and industrial interest of this country that these proposals should go forward. On the financing of Ferranti, all that has so far been committed is a guarantee to the company's principal banker under Section 7 of the industry Act 1972 that the day-today expenses of the company will be guaranteed until such time as a long-term solution is proposed.

Mr. Rose: Will my hon. Friend confirm that any injection of public capital into Ferranti will be accompanied by public accountability and public ownership in that part of the equity which is taken over? Will he undertake that there will be no hiving off in particular of the transformer division or any other division in the Manchester and Failsworth areas, and will he undertake that there will be full consultation with the staff and with the confederation?

Mr. Meacher: I can give my hon. Friend assurances on each of those points. I have made clear that there will be full discussion at a tripartite meeting with the confederation and the management and that we shall take full account of the strong desire to avoid hiving off sections of the company. As for taking a public stake, we shall be acting in accordance


with the view we expressed to the electorate that where there is a large injection of public funds it is only right that a roughly commensurate public equity stake should be taken in the company. We regard it as one of the unsatisfactory faces of capitalism in this country that at present two brothers with 55 per cent. of the shares control no fewer than 17,000 jobs, and that is quite wrong.

Energy Conservation

Mr. Rost: asked the Secretary of State for Industry what action he has taken to assist and advise industries and establishments with which his Department is concerned to conserve energy.

The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Gregor Mackenzie): I am confident that those industries and establishments will have noted the measures listed by my hon. Friend the Undersecretary of State for Energy on 18th November, and will welcome the statement to be made shortly by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy.

Mr. Rost: Why have the Government taken so long to do so little?

Mr. Mackenzie: We have done a great deal, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said on Thursday. If the hon. Member will contain his patience a little longer, he will discover new proposals which, in my view, will be much more appropriate than the proposals made last year to "switch off something" and brush one's teeth in the dark.

Mr. Greville Janner: In considering proposals for the conservation of energy, will the need be borne in mind to ensure that new buildings are fully insulated? Is my hon. Friend instituting any sort of inquiry into how this can best be done?

Mr. Mackenzie: That is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy. Measures have already been announced affecting this matter.

Industrial Confidence

Mr. Adley: asked the Secretary of State for Industry what steps he intends to take to restore industrial confidence.

Mr. Gregor Mackenzie: My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced measures in his Budget State-

ment which reflected his judgment of what is required now to restore to industry the confidence and financial resources needed to sustain output and investment on which full employment depends. For the future, the strategy outlined in the White Paper on the Regeneration of British industry should, by providing the means for full cooperation between the Government and all sections of industry, improve underlying industrial confidence.

Mr. Adley: Why has the Secretary of State ducked answering this Question, when he is the one most responsible for the decline in confidence in British industry? If the Government want a total Socialist State on the lines of Czechoslovakia, why do they not say so? If they do not want that, do they not realise that the behaviour of the Department of Industry is causing the disintegration of the economy? When will the Secretary of State stop behaving like a boy scout and playing games with the nation's future?

Mr. Mackenzie: We are not playing games with the nation's future. On the contrary we have given this matter a great deal of thought. We have presented it in two manifestos. It has been the subject of probably more discussion than any other aspect of the Government's policies. On the basis of that policy we were elected to govern the country, and we are perfectly entitled to bring forward policies of this nature and ask for support for them.

Mr. Stoddart: Is my hon. Friend aware that the announcement by the Secretary of State on Friday about intervention in the car industry has engendered a great deal of confidence in my constituency and many others? These are the sort of measures that we Labour Members expect of the Government, and which we shall encourage them to undertake and which will, we believe, restore confidence to industry.

Mr. Mackenzie: That is precisely why we have introduced the concept of the National Enterprise Board. As I look over British industry now and as it was in the last few years, I am even more certain that the board has a very important rôle to play in providing jobs.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: Has the Minister seen the latest Financial Times survey of the investment plans of industry? Is he aware that it shows the lowest ever— that is to say, the worst ever—level since the survey was first instituted? Why is there this disastrous fall in investment? Is it not in response to penal taxation, runaway wages and threats of Government interference? Does it not amount to a vote of no confidence in the Government's management of the economy?

Mr. Mackenzie: I have seen the Financial Times survey but I cannot pretend to be quite as pessimistic about it as the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) appears to be. Much of the reason for the collapse of investment over the last three years was the former Government's policy of making lame ducks stand on their own two feet.

Public Sector

Mr. Hoyle: asked the Secretary of State for Industry what is his policy towards the achievement of profitability within the public sector of industry.

Mr. Gregor Mackenzie: I would refer my hon. Friend to the Budget Statement by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 12th November when he said that it was his objective to phase out subsidies in compensation for price restraint as soon as possible.

Mr. Hoyle: I am indebted to my hon. Friend for his statement. Will he be kind enough to inform Dr. Monty Finniston that it is no part of the Government's policy to hive off the nationalised industries or sections of them when they become profitable? To use the words of Dr. Finniston, if it had not been for nationalisation there would be no steel industry today. May I also suggest that if Dr. Finniston feels he cannot comply with this policy his resignation would be welcomed?

Mr. Mackenzie: As one who for a very long time has represented a steel constituency, I can heartily endorse my hon. Friend's comments. We were very conscious many years ago that many of our steelworks would have had to close but for the intervention of the State and the taking of the industry into public ownership. As to allowing the BSC

to hive off profitable parts of the industry, I can assure my hon. Friend that we have no intention of doing anything of the kind.

Mr. Wyn Roberts: Why have imports of iron and steel from the EEC risen by 122 per cent. in the first 10 months of this year compared with the same period last year? Does not the Minister agree that it would be beneficial not only for employment in the steel industry but for our trade deficit with the EEC if the industry in Britain produced more than at present?

Mr. Mackenzie: That is quite another question. If the hon. Member wants it answered, he should put it down in that form.

Industrial Development Certificates

Mr. Radice: asked the Secretary of State for Industry whether he will maintain strict control over industrial development certificates; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Heffer: Changes to strengthen the operation of the IDC control were announced on 18th July. I am not aware of any need to strengthen the control further.

Mr. Radice: I thank my hon. Friend for his valuable reply, which will be welcomed in development areas. In view of the high level of unemployment in the North-East and on Merseyside, is it not time that the Government reconsidered the whole range of their regional policies?

Mr. Heffer: My hon. Friend must welcome the fact that the Government doubled REP, strengthened IDC controls and put forward ideas for the establishment of the National Enterprise Board and planning agreements. We have also given a list of about 16 advance factories for the Northern Region, and on that basis we would argue that the Government are doing well. However, we are always open to suggestions on how we can do even better.

Mr. Evelyn King: Does the Minister accept that industrial development certificates can work unfairly since they tend to go to areas where there is already a high wage level and are withheld from areas where there is a low wage level?


Will he undertake that in the granting or withholding of industrial development certificates he will have regard not only to unemployment but to the average wage?

Mr. Heffer: There are problems, and it would be wrong of me to suggest that there are not, in relation to IDC control. What the Government try to do is to carry out their policy of regional development, which means that the highest priority is to get industry to where it is needed most, whether to a high wage area or a low wage area. Unemployment and the social conditions of areas are priority matters. There is, however, flexibility and the Government will continue with their flexible approach to IDC applications.

Mr. Ogden: Will my hon. Friend consider inviting the hon. Member for Dorset, South (Mr. King) to Merseyside so that he may have the opportunity to compare his wage levels with the average wage levels on Merseyside, which are not half as high as they should be, considering the productivity on Merseyside?

Mr. Heffer: My hon. Friend is right in saying that the wage levels on Merseyside are not as high as is generally thought throughout the country, but the hon. Member for Dorset, South (Mr. King) is right to say that the Dorset area is not a high wage level area. There is no point in anyone arguing that one area is necessarily better than another. The policy should be to get a proper distribution of industry throughout the country, which means a proper level of wages throughout the country.

CHILDREN OF GOD

Mr. Hunt: asked the Attorney General whether he will seek to obtain from the Attorney-General of the State of New York his report on the Children of God in order to consider its relevance to his policies in relation to the activities of this cult within Great Britain.

The Attorney-General (Mr. S. C. Silkin): My responsibility is limited to the prosecution of offences. If the hon. Member has evidence of offences committed in this country by followers of this cult. I shall refer that evidence to

the Director of Public Prosecutions for his consideration.

Mr. Hunt: As the American report provides detailed and documented evidence of rape, brainwashing and kidnapping by the Children of God in the United States, does not the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that there is at least a strong case for an inquiry into the activities of this group within the United Kingdom, so that young people and parents may be alerted to the methods and teachings of this sinister sect? Will he lend his support to the call for such an inquiry?

The Attorney-General: I have seen the report in the newspapers about the activities of this organisation in the United States, and no doubt it will have been noted. But it is not my responsibility to order an inquiry. That is a matter which the hon. Gentleman will have to take up with the Minister concerned.

COURTS (PRESS REPORTING)

Mr. Skinner: asked the Attorney-General if he will introduce legislation to prevent courts from limiting Press reporting by the use of contempt powers.

Mr. Sedgemore: asked the Attorney-General if he will introduce legislation to prevent courts from limiting Press reporting by the use of contempt powers.

The Attorney-General: Legislation on the law of contempt must await the publication of the Phillimore Committee's report, which is due tomorrow, and subsequent consideration of it.

Mr. Skinner: Does my right hon. and learned Friend feel that it is the job of a Government legal spokesman to go to court, as in the Paul Foot case, on behalf of members of the establishment, and to become involved in these public perversions, in a way on behalf of the very people who created the market for which Janie Jones in the original case was sent to prison? Does he not think that it is wrong to represent people of that kind when they are wrong as well?

The Attorney-General: I represented nobody but myself in the application. I thought that it was right to go to the court, and so did the court.

Mr. Fry: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that far more dangerous to the freedom of comment of the Press are the activities of the National Union of Journalists and the legislation proposed by his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment on the closed shop?

The Attorney-General: That is an entirely different question.

Mr. Rose: Is it not unsatisfactory that the reporting of cases should be left to the vagaries of judicial decisions? Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it would be better for the House to lay down the limits on reporting, not least in order to provide protection for victims of blackmail or sexual assaults?

The Attorney-General: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that there are many situations which one should consider in relation to the Phillimore Report and this aspect of contempt of court. It is for this reason that I said on a previous occasion that the Government will give careful consideration to the report and will take into account all possible views, including, I hope, those of hon. Members, and then decide what legislation is required.

FAMILY COURTS

Mr. Watkinson: asked the Attorney-General if he will take steps to set up a separate family court, as recommended in the Finer Report.

The Attorney-General: As I stated in the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) on 21st November—[Vol. 881, c. 487]—decisions as to the committee's recommendations on family courts must await decisions on the other main recommendations of the committee and receipt of the Law Commission's Report on the Matrimonial Jurisdiction of Magistrates' Courts.

Mr. Watkinson: I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for that reply. Does he accept that there is now a complete dichotomy between the operation of the divorce courts and the magistrates' courts? As a result of the 1969 Divorce Reform Act the concept of the matrimonial offence has been taken out of the

divorce court but remains in the magistrates' courts. Should not this distinction be done away with at the earliest possible opportunity?

The Attorney-General: These matters need a great deal of consideration, particularly as the question of which courts should deal with these matters is linked with questions of substantive law on which the Finer Committee made recommendations. These must all be considered together before the Government are in a position to come to final conclusions about the matter.

Mrs. Hayman: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that many of the problems experienced by one-parent families stem from the differences in jurisdiction pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Watkinson)? For five years the Finer Committee was considering these matters, long after family courts had been recommended throughout the country. My recollection is that in our manifesto we are committed to the concept of family courts, and many of us were very disappointed that it was not included in the Gracious Speech. We hope that we shall see it soon.

The Attorney-General: I take note of the latter part of my hon. Friend's question. What appears in the Queen's Speech is not a matter for me. It is a matter for my right hon. Friends who are members of the Cabinet, which I am not. My hon. Friend will be aware that the Finer Report contained a number of proposals about the substantive law relating to maintenance and so on. Other bodies, such as the Law Commission, are considering these matters, and it would be wrong to adopt a proposal on the courts without having first come to conclusions about the substantive law. I hope that the delay will not be too great before effect is given to the proposals.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman elucidate his reference to the Queen's Speech? Is he enunciating a new and unorthodox doctrine of the collective constitutional responsibility of Ministers? Is he suggesting that those Ministers who are not in the Cabinet bear any less degree of responsibility for the contents, be they good or bad, of the Queen's Speech?

The Attorney-General: No, Sir, I was not enunciating a new principle. What I was saying—I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman, with his genius for understanding, understood me—was that I did not draft the Queen's Speech. Therefore, I was not responsible for any ommissions from it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I am responsible, as a member of the Government, for what it contained.

Mr. Cormack: Will the Attorney-General now say whether it is his party's policy to introduce family courts?

The Attorney-General: Of course, it is the Government's policy. The question is whether it be this year, next year or when the Government are in a position to come to a conclusion as to the manner in which the Finer Committee's recommendations will be given effect. Having regard to all the other matters, I can say that it is unlikely to be this year.

ENERGY SAVING

The Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Eric G. Varley): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement on energy saving.
As the House knows, this year our import bill for oil is likely to exceed £3,500 million. By the end of the present decade we should no longer be net importers of energy. We are almost the only major industrial country in the western world which has this prospect. Nevertheless, the need to reduce our import bill, and at the same time our dependence on imported fuels, is acute. The need to save energy has been widely recognised abroad. Conservation programmes have already been announced by some other countries, and we are co-operating in the International Energy Agency and in the Community in considering different conservation measures.
Progress has already been made. It is estimated, for example, that voluntary conservation measures this year have already saved about 2 per cent. of our normal energy consumption—worth about £150 million at current import prices. These savings are a good beginning. But we need to do much more in the years ahead.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made it plain in his Budget Statement that the Government intend to ensure that energy prices are brought as quickly as possible to a level which reflects true costs. The best advice we have is that a move to such prices might save at least £50 million—and perhaps a good deal more—on our import bill in a full year.
To rely on the price mechanism alone however is not enough. The Government have, therefore, considered what further steps they can take to reinforce the pressures of price.
My Advisory Council on Energy Conservation has already produced a number of suggestions for the Government to consider, and its work will grow and develop over the months and years ahead. The measures and proposals I announce today, therefore, must be regarded as an interim package, which we intend to extend and reinforce in the future. The measures the Government have decided to adopt are as follows:
First, to introduce a loan scheme which will provide a source of finance for energy saving investment in industry, to ensure that such investments are not held back by cash flow problems. Loans will be at rates of interest comparable with those under the Industry Act. I expect to make available £3 million a year for this purpose. Full details of the scheme will be announced shortly.
Second, the Government will use their powers to ensure that the next round of oil price increases bears more heavily on motor spirit than on other oil products. This move will seek further to discourage imports of motor spirit and crude oil used to produce motor spirit, which currently cost us about £500 million a year. Details will be announced when the Price Commission has finished its work on the present round of company applications for price increases.
Third, the Government have reviewed the programme for reducing the lead content in petrol. The reduction which took effect on 1st November has added more than £10 million a year to our import bill and further stages of the programme could be very much more expensive than this. We do not intend to go back on what has been done so far, but have decided that a decision on


further reductions should not be made before a thorough review of all the medical and economic implications of proceeding with the programme has been undertaken.
Fourth, about three million tons of coal equivalent a year is used in Government civil and defence buildings. The Property Services Agency expects to save 6 per cent. of the energy consumption estimated for the current financial year and is planning to spend, over the next few years, up to £5 million a year on improved control equipment, draught proofing and additional insulation. These and other measures aim to achieve eventually savings of around £20 million a year, or more than 20 per cent. of current expenditure in this area. The Ministry of Defence expects, given normal weather, to achieve its target of saving in the current financial year of 10 per cent. of fuel oil and 6 per cent. of other forms of energy.
Fifth, public authorities other than Government—for example local authorities—use some 17 million tons of coal equivalent a year, and a further 20 million tons is estimated to be used in public sector housing. The Government are opening urgent discussions with local authorities and others concerned to see how far and in what ways savings can be achieved in this important area of our life.
Sixth, speed limits. Excessive speed wastes petrol, as well as costing lives. The Government have, therefore, decided to reduce the maximum speed limits on single carriageway roads to 50 m.p.h. and on dual carriageways other than motorways to 60 m.p.h. Speed limits on motorways will remain unchanged. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport will make a further statement on this later today.
Seventh, we shall introduce compulsory limits on heating levels in buildings other than living accommodation and a limited range of further exemptions designed to protect the young, the old, the sick, the disabled and certain types of material and equipment. These standards will involve a maximum heating level of 20 degrees Centigrade or 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Substantial savings can also be made in private households, and these will be just as valuable as those in

industry and commerce. I appeal for the maximum voluntary savings.
Eighth, the Government recognise the need for improved insulation in private dwellings. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has today laid an order which will have the effect of approximately doubling the standards of thermal insulation required in new dwellings.
Ninth, in all areas of our national life greater attention needs to be focused on the careful use of energy. My advisory council has suggested that company annual reports should state the expenditure incurred on fuel and the steps taken to save energy. The possibility of including this provision in future legislation is being considered. Meanwhile boards of directors should voluntarily demonstrate their public spirit and their good stewardship by implementing this suggestion. All boards should make clear within their firms their commitment to energy saving and should make someone specifically responsible for achieving it.
Tenth, both management and employee representatives engaged in joint consultation in industry and commerce should see that energy saving is made a regular subject for practical discussion leading to early and effective action. I have written to the CBI and to the Association of British Chambers of Commerce asking them to draw the attention of their members to these points, and to give them their full support. I have written similarly to the TUC on the important contribution which union representatives can make through joint consultations.
Eleventh, I have decided to restrict the use of electricity for external display and advertising purposes during daylight hours. The necessary orders for this and the proposed heating standards will be laid shortly and will come into effect after the New Year holiday period. I do not propose to ban floodlighting at this time. I would, however, ask those concerned to consider urgently in the new year whether the lights so used are really necessary outside the hours when they have maximum impact.
Twelfth and finally, to promote and reinforce action in all these areas, the Government will, over the months ahead, develop a publicity campaign to inform and advise industry and commerce,


motorists and households, on how they can help themselves and the nation by using energy more carefully and efficiently. In addition, the heads of nationalised fuel industries have told me that they will co-ordinate energy saving publicity.
It is not possible to estimate with any precision the energy savings which may emerge from this package, not least because many of the effects are cumulative over time. The Government are directly responsible for only a very small part of the nation's use of energy. Within this area some impressive savings are already being made, as my statement has shown. For the rest, while the Government can, and will, give a lead, and will run a major energy saving campaign, success will depend primarily on the efforts of individual businesses and households. There is no doubt that substantial savings are possible. Indeed, if we were to be able to save, within the next few years, say 10 per cent. of our total energy consumption—an amount which currently costs about £700 million a year to import—we would have made a major contribution to our national well-being and national future.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin: The House will be grateful to the Secretary of State for his very full statement. Is he aware that he will have the full support of the Opposition for all sensible measures in the national interest to save energy in both the long and the short term, to save oil imports and to protect our slender coal resources? I have only one other comment. The country will want to know why all these measures were not announced months ago.

Mr. Varley: The right hon. Gentleman knows that work has been going ahead and has already been done on this package. For example, voluntary savings have already saved £150 million. These are complex measures and this is a complex problem. The only way to bring about a dramatic and immediate reduction in energy consumption is by rationing, rota cuts of electricity supply and strict allocation schemes for fuel— in short, misery. If we were to do that, the impact would do great harm to industry, industrial activity and exports.

Mr. Palmer: I have two questions to put to my right hon. Friend. First, is

not the time scale rather too long? Should we not be aiming at achieving, say, a 10 per cent. to 15 per cent. saving in about three years, which is the estimate that many experts make for an advanced industrial country? Secondly, will the reports of the Advisory Council on Energy Conservation be published?

Mr. Varley: On the last point, I shall see what I can do to make available as much information as possible on the work coming from the advisory council. On the first point, I want to see savings as quickly as possible, provided that they do not inflict unnecessary misery and cause great harm to our industrial activity and export potential. If we can achieve a 15 per cent. saving in three years, nobody will be more delighted than me.

Mr. Grimond: When the Government put further taxes on petrol, will they bear in mind the needs of rural areas, which are far greater than continuing flood lighting? Secondly, is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied with the proposed reductions by public authorities, on which he has only just begun to talk to local authorities, which are to be only 6 per cent. to 10 per cent. in Government offices, and so forth? Many people feel that all public buildings, including this one, are overheated. Thirdly, as there will obviously be a continuing shortage, is the right hon. Gentleman looking at the future size of the aircraft and motor industries, which no doubt will have to be reduced in the long run?

Mr. Varley: We have very much in mind the problems of the rural areas. We shall look at whatever measures are available to see whether we can cushion people who are affected. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that public buildings are overheated. I do not know about the Palace of Westminster. I do not seem to spend as much time here as the right hon. Gentleman and others, but on occasion it seems too hot.

Mr. Urwin: What consultations and degree of co-operation have there been between my right hon. Friend, local authorities and Ministers in other Departments with a view to increasing the number of district heating schemes and trying to conserve energy at an even faster rate?

Mr. Varley: Studies have been undertaken to see whether waste heat from


power stations can be used in domestic circumstances. I hope in due course to report on the results of that research. Co-operation between myself and my right hon. Friends is, and has been, very close in working through the measures that I have announced today.

Mr. Wood: I strongly support the plea made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond). Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if the temperature in this place were lowered by three or four degrees we should all feel very much better for it?

Mr. Varley: The heating in this House is not my responsibility. However, I am sure that the authorities of the House will have noted what the right hon. Gentleman said.

Mr. Conlan: Referring to the proposals for assisting industry to conserve fuel, may I ask whether my right hon. Friend is aware that a large amount of fuel oil is used for domestic central heating systems? Will he consider making suitable loans or grants available to enable people to convert their systems?

Mr. Varley: I have already indicated that this is an interim statement. I hope in due course to bring further measures before the House. The point made by my hon. Friend will be kept in mind. I am advised that the cost of providing loans for thermal insulation in domestic circumstances is tremendously expensive. Therefore, we think that it will be better to direct our limited resources to helping industry first, because the real savings will come from industry.

Mr. Emery: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that, although his statement contains 12 suggestions, the package is a very small squeak indeed? Does he consider that the work on home insulation that was available to him when he took office ought by now to have been carried through to deal with existing, not just new, houses?

Mr. Varley: I have not seen that work. Perhaps I ought to go and look for it.

Mr. Emery: The right hon. Gentleman should.

Mr. Varley: I do not want to make cheap cracks as a result of these measures,

because the situation is extremely serious. However, as the hon. Gentleman knows, very little work was done in either the Department of Energy or the Department of Trade and Industry on energy conservation before we took over in March.

Mr. Emery: That is not true.

Mr. Douglas-Mann: Will my right hon. Friend note that, in view of the scale of our economic problems, many people will feel that the proposals are inadequate? Will he assure the House that his Department recognises that this is not just a short-term problem but is the first ripple of a very long-term problem? Are studies being undertaken into alternatives, such as solar and tidal energy, to help meet the problem?

Mr. Varley: One of my first actions when I went into the Department of Energy in March was to set up an energy support technology unit at Harwell to look at other forms of energy. I emphasise again that the only dramatic and immediate way to reduce energy consumption is by short-time working, rota cuts and strict rationing and allocation schemes. We are not so proud as to turn down any practicable suggestions that might be made. If my hon. Friend has any practical suggestions to put to us about energy conservation we shall listen to him.

Mr. John H. Osborn: Will the Secretary of State arrange not to make statements in December and January but to make long-term statements so that we can conserve energy during the summer when it causes less discomfort? Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that we are tackling this problem as energetically as the Americans who have, for example, Project Independence? The Americans have set up an Energy Research and Development Agency. Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that British as well as European dynamism is sufficient?

Mr. Varley: I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that I have made my statement too early. If so, it conflicts with what has been suggested by his right hon. Friend the Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Jenkin). We shall bring forward measures as we feel necessary after appropriate


research into all the implications has been undertaken.
We have a unit in the Department monitoring what other countries are doing. Of course what is done in one country differs from what is done in another. The hon. Gentleman suggested that a great deal was being done in the United States. We are watching carefully what the Americans are doing, and if their measures have an application to Britain we shall implement them.

Mr. Kinnock: My right hon. Friend deserves the congratulations of the whole House on his statement and on embarking on this kind of policy. I acknowledge that it is an interim statement and is concerned exclusively with conservation. However, does he not acknowledge the need, in order to prevent large imports of fuel, to have a new policy aimed at the full-scale exploitation of our own mineral energy resources so that we may have a firm assurance about the future of the country's coalfields?

Mr. Varley: I agree with my hon. Friend that we want to work to what I have described elsewhere as an integrated energy policy for Britain. I think that the investment programme for the coal industry is worth while and will pay dividends. I want the coal industry not just to produce 120 million tons a year— that is only a jumping-off point—but as quickly as possible to get to about 150 million tons a year.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Does the right hon. Gentleman possess statutory and legal powers for all the 12 steps, other than those that are purely exhortatory, or do the further steps suggested by the Advisory Council on Energy Conservation require fresh powers? Can he also say from where the figure of 68°F comes? Much medical opinion would probably think it too high for health.

Mr. Varley: The temperature will vary from place to place, but I hope that people do not exceed 68°F. I very much agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that in most circumstances it is possible for people to be comfortably warm with temperatures lower than 68°F. The necessary regulations will be laid under the Fuel and Electricity Control

Act, a measure introduced by the last Conservative administration.

Mr. Faulds: In the pattern of these measures, would it not be logical for my right hon. Friend to require that wherever central heating has been installed, wall and roofing thermal insulation should be mandatory, and that wherever central heating is to be installed in future, before the provision is made wall and roofing insulation should be insisted on by legislation?

Mr. Varley: I am not sure that we can compel people in domestic circumstances in the way suggested by my hon. Friend, but in the advertising and publicity campaigns on which we are embarking we shall give as much advice as possible. My hon. Friend is right, and it makes sense for people to insulate their homes much more than they do. In addition, they can save money by doing so.

Mr. Gordon Wilson: On behalf of the Scottish National Party, I should like to congratulate the Minister on his initiative in taking these first steps in energy conservation, particularly in the energyshort world in which we now live. However, will he consider the level of finance required for improvements in energy saving in industry? Is it sufficient? Secondly, will he consider the effect of the valuation system on domestic improvements, such as double glazing or central heating, which may give rise to an increase in the valuation of a house, for it therefore acts as a disincentive to the steps necessary to save energy?

Mr. Varley: The last matter is a subject for my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for the Environment and the Secretary of State for Scotland. The figure of £3 million for loans for industry is a start. If more is required, the Government will have to consider the matter.

Mr. Tinn: I should like to support what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds) about the thermal insulation of walls. Is my right hon. Friend aware that one method is to inject polyurethane foam into cavity walls, and that this is already being done by many people at their own expense, thus saving energy? However, in some areas the work is being hindered


and delayed by the requirement of local authorities under existing building regulations that separate applications must be made in each case. Will my right hon. Friend consider supporting the representations that I am making to his colleagues in the Department of the Environment for a simplification of the procedure?

Mr. Varley: My right hon. Friend will have taken note of what my hon. Friend says. We hope to cover the matters that he has mentioned in the advice that we shall be able to give to householders and others in the months and years ahead.

Mr. Powell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many of the items in the package will result in more bureaucracy than economy and that the only way of securing a pervasive and genuine economy is for people to have to face the consequences of their own actions and decisions in terms of price?

Mr. Varley: I do not think that we can do it all by price alone. As I said in my statement, we intend to carry through the proposals that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his Budget. There will be more realistic energy pricing. The prospective deficits for the nationalised fuel industries for 1974–75 are quite frightening and something will have to be done about them, but, in addition, we shall have to see how far we can protect poor households.

Mr. Dalyell: How long should it take to establish the medical and environmental implications of the reductions of the lead content of petrol?

Mr. Varley: I do not know. We have resisted the temptation to reverse the proposals on which we embarked on 1st November and which were costly, but to move to the next stage would cost about £50 million in additional oil imports. Medical research is to go ahead, and in due course the conclusions will be reported.

Sir J. Rodgers: I welcome the doubling of the statutory insulation standards for domestic houses. However, does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that even so our insulation standards will be among the lowest in

Europe? Is there a possibility of giving tax rebates to those householders who undertake insulation themselves? Would not that take care of the points made by the hon. Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds)? Should not some encouragement be given to householders who undertake this work themselves?

Mr. Varley: Insulation can save a great deal of money, but I am sure that the hon. Member appreciates that taxes and tax allowances are matters not for me but for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to whose attention I shall draw the hon. Gentleman's comments.

SPEED LIMITS

The Minister for Transport (Mr. Frederick Mulley): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a statement about speed limits.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy has informed the House that the Government propose to reduce speed limits on the roads as a contribution to fuel saving.
In assessing the amount by which speed limits should be reduced there is a balance to be struck. Lower speeds save fuel and reduce accidents; but slower journeys may be uneconomic. Moreover, if speed limits do not command general support from road users, their enforcement puts serious extra strain on police resources.
In the light of these considerations, we have concluded that the 70 mph limit should be retained on motorways, but that a limit of 60 mph should be imposed on all other dual-carriageway roads and of 50 mph on all single-carriageway roads, unless these already carry a lower limit.
Motorways confer important economic benefits in the movement of traffic, particularly freight. They are designed for higher speeds than other roads and even so are by far our safest roads. The 70 mph limit on the motorways also provides a differential in speed limits between heavy lorries and other traffic, while allowing these lorries to travel at economic speeds. As motorways carry only a small proportion of total road traffic, a significant saving in fuel would require a


drastic reduction in speed, which could be achieved only by a major enforcement effort and loss of efficiency. I have therefore decided that it would be wrong to change the present limit.
The bulk of traffic flows on other main roads, where a reduction in average speeds by even 5 mph would save about £10 million a year in fuel costs. Recognising that in present conditions few single-carriageway roads permit sustained speeds much over 60 mph, we are aiming for an effective reduction in speeds on both single and dual-carriageways of between 5 mph and 10 mph.
I should also remind the House that efficient driving and proper vehicle maintenance can save petrol as effectively as lower speeds. The motoring organisations and others had a lot of sound advice to offer about this last winter. If, as past experience has shown, lower speeds and more careful driving lead to fewer accidents, we shall obtain a double benefit from these measures.
The new limits apply to all roads in the United Kingdom. On order in respect of roads in Great Britain will be made tomorrow, Tuesday, and come into operation at midnight on Saturday 14th December. In respect of Northern Ireland a separate order will be made.

Mr. Channon: Can the right hon. Gentleman answer two questions: first, what is his estimate of the likely total saving in fuel costs as a result of the measures that he has announced? Secondly has he had full consultations with the police, who will have to enforce these new measures, particularly as they will now have to deal with five separate speed limits? In differing circumstances the speed limits will be 30, 40, 50, 60 or 70 mph. Is the Minister satisfied that the measures he has announced can be properly enforced? Secondly, are the police satisfied about that?

Mr. Mulley: If, as we believe, and as I said in my statement, these measures lead to a fall in average speeds—and it is the average speed of travel, and not speed limits, that determines the result— we shall make a saving. If average speeds come down by 5 to 10 mph we shall save £10 million a year, represented by 50 million gallons of imported

oil fuel at 18p to 20p per gallon. That is the basis of the calculation.
The answer to the hon. Gentleman's second question is that these various speed limits are already in operation. Motorists know when they are on a motorway, when they are on a dual carriageway, and when they are on a single carriageway. This is, therefore, a simple and understandable scheme. It avoids the need for great alterations to signs, and so on, which would be costly. It seems to me that most people will understand what is proposed. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that, through the Home Office, my right hon, Friend the Home Secretary has discussed the scheme with the police, and I understand they feel it is workable.

Mr. Cryer: Does not my right hon. Friend's statement indicate that there should be a switch from motorway to railway expenditure? Will he try to persuade our right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer that a larger tax on more powerful cars would produce fuel savings? Finally, will he consider cancelling Concorde—that would be a good example to set—and switching those resources to more socially useful manufacturing industry?

Mr. Mulley: My hon. Friend has posed some tempting questions but, for good or ill, matters relating to tax and Concorde are outside my ministerial responsibility.
I do not think that the fuel situation requires any change in the Government's policy vis-à-vis the railways and motorways. As my hon. Friend knows, we have greatly increased our expenditure in support of the railways and carried through the reductions made by the previous Government in the motorway building programme.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that his speed limit proposals will penalise unequally the peripheral areas of the country which do not have motorways—the West Country and areas in the North of Scotland? Will he include within the motorway speed limit what are now termed dual-carriageways built to motorway standards? How does he justify penalising those areas of the United Kingdom where the average income per


head is well below the national average? That will inevitably be the effect of these proposals?

Mr. Mulley: I am at a loss to understand what the hon. Gentleman means by "penalising", because if these measures have the effect of saving fuel—which is what the Government and, I think, the whole House want—that will provide a financial benefit to the owners of cars driven at lower speeds. There will be no financial cost involved. The main reason why it is possible to have the different speed limits is that motorways are much safer than dual carriageway roads, which in turn are much safer than single carriageway roads.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: What about dual carriageway roads built to motorway standards?

Mr. Leslie Huckfield: Will my right hon. Friend accept that the speed limits that he has announced are far more sensible than those we had 12 months ago, particularly for the economic use of commercial vehicles on dual carriageways and motorways.
Will my right hon. Friend also accept that the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) has a point, because some dual carriageways are built to the higher standards of motorways? Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a case for permanent signposts at the side of dual carriageways and motorways?

Mr. Mulley: My hon. Friend speaks with great knowledge on these matters, and he has a point. But I must tell him that I was under pressure to bring the speed limits down even more than we have done. The hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) drew attention to the possibility of confusion with the different speed limits. I think that it would be exceedingly confusing if some dual carriageways other than motorways had one speed limit while another set of dual carriageways had a different speed limit. The situation would be extremely complicated. When a dual carriageway that is not a motorway is improved, as it sometimes is, to motorway standards, largely by having large separate intersections, it is then classified as a motorway and the speed limit automatically increases.

Mr. Freud: As it seems a different offence to drive faster than the speed limit when the speed limit is imposed for fuel conservation rather than for safety, will the right hon. Gentleman say whether a breach of this order will result in a fine or an endorsement?

Mr. Mulley: Arrangements for dealing with breaches of the new order will be the same as at present. I hope the hon. Gentleman will not go away with the illusion that these are not sensible road safety proposals as well as fuel economy measures.

Mr. Greville Janner: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that during the period when lower speed limits were in operation on motorways there was a substantial saving in both lives and health, and that in the United States, where there is a very much lower highway limit, the public co-operate? Will he reconsider the possibility of having a lower speed limit on motorways?

Mr. Mulley: For the reasons that I have given, I do not think that one should reconsider the speed limit on motorways. As my hon. and learned Friend knows, the accident rate on motorways is much lower than on any other kind of road. There was a welcome saving in accidents during the period of the 50 mph speed limit. Happily, the improvement in the number of fatalities and injuries compared with last year continued after the ending of the lower speed limit.

Mr. Alan Clark: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the calculations that have led him to think there will be a saving of £10 million are somewhat imprecise, and that in any case this figure is minuscule as a proportion of the total fuel bill? Further, does he agree that, other than inducing an atmosphere of torpor and congestion, this is a propaganda exercise? Will he confirm that, whatever his right hon. Friend may have discussed with the police, this will lead to a massive extra work load for them and the alienation of their relations with a section of the community that is otherwise law abiding?

Mr. Mulley: I am at a loss to understand the hon. Gentleman. First he says that this is a minuscule provision, and then he tries to throw doubt on what he


describes as the little that we are doing. He cannot back a horse both ways, or tell a bookmaker he will give him the name of the horse after the race, which is what he is proposing to do.
We cannot give a precise figure, but I believe that in the interests of safety and fuel economy most motorists will want to co-operate. I accept that any speed limits that are not broadly accepted by road users are virtually unenforceable. I believe that this is the best package to meet the objective of saving fuel costs. I shall be delighted if we save much more, but we have no means of measuring the amount exactly because other factors such as weather and prices determine the demand for petrol.

Mr. Ashton: Does not the attempt to save £10 million out of an oil deficit of £2,500 million by these means smack of Austerity Cripps, which got us a bad name after the war? Would not it be better to make real savings by bringing in petrol rationing if my right hon. Friend means to achieve anything?

Mr. Mulley: My right hon. Friend announced a little earlier today that these are interim measures in the sense that he is considering a number of other measures, and that is within his field rather than mine.

Mr. Cormack: Will my right hon. Friend set an example by coming to my constituency in a ministerial mini and acknowledging to my constituents that he would save about £50 million or £60 million by axeing the M54? My constituents do not want this motorway, and many people do not want motorways. Now is the right time to cut back on the motorway programme.

Mr. Mulley: The cuts made in the road-building programme generally have been very substantial. I think that I can do better than the hon. Gentleman suggests. I do not know about a ministerial mini, but if I do not come at all I shall save even more petrol.

Mr. Powell: With regard to Northern Ireland, is it proposed to impose a 70 m.p.h. limit on the motorways or to leave them as at present without limit?

Mr. Mulley: Although this is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my understanding is that Northern Ireland will have the same speed limits as the rest of the United Kingdom but that a separate Northern Ireland order is required. However, I shall direct my right hon. Friend's attention to the right hon. Gentleman's point and I will let him know the answer. I am sorry that I do not have the answer now.

Mr. loan Evans: Does my right hon. Friend agree that in order seriously to conserve energy in Britain we need a co-ordinated road and rail service and that we should get the goods which are at present carried by the heavy juggernaut lorries—which travel great distances while empty and consume a great deal of petrol—carried on the railways and reopen some of the rail passenger and freight services?

Mr. Mulley: It is much easier to talk about a co-ordinated road and rail policy than it is to achieve it. However, if my hon. Friend has any ideas on how we can get more freight, or, for that matter, more passengers, on to the railways, I and I am sure the Chairman of the British Railways Board will be glad to hear from him.

Mr. Brittan: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the problems of enforcement cannot be swept under the carpet as easily as he has indicated? Further, does he agree that the measures which he has announced will impose a considerable extra burden on the police? What extra steps are being taken to recruit more police and to pay them for this extra work?

Mr. Mulley: I do not know of any proposals to pay the police extra for traffic as distinct from other duties. This is essentially a matter for the Home Secretary. However, if we took the hon. Gentleman's point to its logical conclusion, we should have no limits on any roads anywhere. I plead guilty to having exceeded the speed limit from time to time in the past without being detected. I do not drive at present, so that there is no problem, but if any hon. Gentleman who is a car driver were to indicate that at no time in his life had he exceeded any speed limit I am sure that the House would be keen and interested to hear from him.

HS146 PROJECT

The Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn): On 22nd July Hawker Siddeley Aviation notified the Government that, in its view, continuing expenditure under the contract for development of the HS146 aircraft, supported by the Government in August 1973, was no longer justified and that the HS146 was unviable as a commercial project at that time. Accordingly it proposed mutual termination.
The Government considered that the arguments put forward by the firm were not wholly convincing and began a careful examination of its case and the wider issues involved. As part of this review, I proposed to the firm that it should meet jointly with myself and the trade unions so that all those concerned in the future of: the aircraft could be involved in the issues. Hawker Siddeley refused. However, I have held full discussions separately with the trade unions and the firm and have received many views from Members and the public.
While the Government were still considering the matter, Hawker Siddeley Aviation wrote to me on 14th October saying it proposed to terminate work on 21st October unilaterally. This it did, cancelling simultaneously all the sub-contracts that had been negotiated. Since then it has stated to me that it is willing to contemplate carrying on only if the Government provide all the required funds from now on, which would be at least £120 million over the next three years at today's prices. This would represent a substantial increase on the original estimate due in part to underlying inflation and to extra costs arising on sub-contracts which would now need to be renegotiated.
The Government have now completed a thorough review of all the options. We have had to accept that the 50–50 funding is no longer open to us and we have decided, taking all the factors into account, that we cannot justify 100 per cent. Government funding. The Government are, however, concerned to maintain this type of capability in the civil aircraft industry, and to give the board of the new nationalised aircraft corporation the opportunity of reviewing the HS146 pro-

ject itself in the light of the circumstances of the time and its plans for the industry as a whole.
Sir Arnold Hall, on behalf of Hawker Siddeley, has assured me that the company will retain the necessary jigs, tools and drawings on the HS146 and relevant design capacity. The Government will be prepared if necessary to contribute towards the relatively minor costs of keeping the option open.
I should add that I am now hopeful that a tripartite meeting will take place with the trade unions and Hawker Siddeley Aviation to discuss the situation and how best to maintain a design capability related to the HS146, and I have issued invitations for a meeting to be held later this week. I should also add that the Government are considering how the House could be provided with fuller opportunities for discussing this type of project in the future.

Mr. Heseltine: I should like to ask the Secretary of State three questions.
First, what is the Government's assessment of the prospects of the project, and where does it differ from that of the company? Secondly, will the right hon. Gentleman clarify the position about the funding arrangements to which his statement refers? Will the Government take on 100 per cent. of the responsibility for the interim period? If not, what less sum do they intend to take on? Thirdly, the right hon. Gentleman says that he cannot justify 100 per cent. funding of the project itself. Is not that precisely what his proposals for nationalisation of the industry will achieve, having added in the meantime the cost of buying out the private sector?

Mr. Benn: On the hon. Gentleman's first question, the assessment made by Hawker Siddeley was made on a 50–50 basis on the basis of the existing negotiated sub-contracts. By terminating the sub-contracts unilaterally, the Government were being asked not simply to transform themselves from 50 per cent. supporters to 100 per cent. supporters but to do it on the basis that the sub-contracts would have to be renegotiated at a new price.
On the question of the funding of the maintenance of the option, I do not think


I can go beyond what I said in my statement, namely, that
The Government will be prepared if necessary to contribute towards the relatively minor costs of keeping the option open".
On the final question, the hon. Gentleman should have regard to the fact that, at a time when economic circumstances may be making it difficult for the private sector to fund aircraft projects, the rôle of public ownership in maintaining confidence is an important factor.

Mr. Whitehead: Will my right hon. Friend accept that most of us on this side of the House think that in the regrettable circumstances which have led to the present situation he has probably made the right decision? Speaking in the immediate future context of nationalising the aerospace industry, will his Department undertake a review of all the major possible aerospace projects, including the HS146 and the BAC311?

Mr. Benn: I can understand my hon. Friend's disappointment with what I have said, and I am grateful to him for realising that the Government had to do it. The new board of the nationalised aircraft corporation will be undertaking a strategy study. I hope that the House has not left out of account what I said at the end of my statement, that, in our view, the House should
be provided with fuller opportunities for discussing
aircraft projects.

Mr. Wall: As discussion started on the project in July, why has it taken so long to reach a final decision? Will the right hon. Gentleman say for how long the options to which he referred are likely to remain open? Will they be for one, two or three years, or longer?

Mr. Benn: To take the latter part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question first—and I know his interest— the tripartite meetings this Friday will begin the first joint examination there has been of the aircraft and will, I hope, be fruitful. As I said, I hope that the House will have fuller information than it has had in the past. The fact that it has not been possible hitherto to have these tripartite discussions explains why the Government took some time to examine the Hawker Siddeley arrange-

ment. There was also an intervening election which deflected Ministers away from these matters.

Mrs. Hayman: I welcome the statement made by my right hon. Friend. What time scale does he envisage for a reassessment of the project? I recognise that the Department has made some contribution towards safeguarding the design staff, but is my right hon. Friend aware that redundancies will occur on the shop floor at Hatfield and other Hawker Siddeley branches when the contracts for the Tridents start to run out? Many of us are concerned that large-scale redundancies will occur throughout the industry in the interim.

Mr. Benn: My hon. Friend is right in saying that anxiety about redundancies does not arise in the immediate future. It is the run down of other work that makes the Hawker Siddeley 146 of such concern to those who work in the industry. Given the likelihood that the market for the aircraft has slipped somewhat and that the immediate redundancy position is not of major proportions but lies, as my hon. Friend says, in the midterm, I hope that we shall have time to consider these matters before any irrevocable decisions are taken.

Mr. Pardoe: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that some of us on the Opposition benches are glad that he has at last been able to arrange a tripartite meeting and find it regrettable that it should have been refused by the company in the past? How many redundancies will there be as a result of this decision? Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Government would have continued this project on a 50–50 funding basis?

Mr. Benn: The last part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question is not answerable because it is hypothetical. Even retrospective hypothetical questions are difficult for Ministers to answer. The initiative for termination came from the firm and not from the Government, and that should be placed on record. The number of redundancies involved depends upon the capacity to absorb in other work those who are now working directly on the aircraft. The mid-term problem depends on whether other projects can be advanced and on the attitude that will be


adopted by the new aircraft corporation on this project when the corporation has had a chance of assessing its strategy.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell: Will my right hon. Friend have talks with the Leader of the House on whether the whole matter can be discussed by a Select Committee of the House, so that when the industry is eventually nationalised there will have been in the intervening period an assessment of the future of the project?

Mr. Benn: Having had responsibilities for the aircraft industry over many years, I share my hon. Friend's view that the House should have more information about projects of this kind. Some Select Committees already have responsibilities and have reported on the matter. I shall certainly put what my hon. Friend said to the Leader of the House, but I feel sure that the handling of these difficult decisions—and this applies to Ministers of all parties—would be likely to be improved if we could get greater openness in the options and alternatives, as we did with Concorde earlier this year. That would be welcomed by management, unions, Members of Parliament and the public.

Mr. Tebbit: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the question which my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) put to him? What is the Government's assessment of the economic viability of the aircraft, and when was it made? Secondly, will the right hon. Gentleman say which was the heaviest handicap the project had to bear? Was it that it was not economically viable, that it was not subject to an unbreakable treaty or that it happened to be destined to be constructed at Hatfield and not at Bristol?

Hon. Members: Cheap.

Mr. Benn: The hon. Gentleman may perhaps do less than justice to Governments of any party which have to handle difficult decisions of this kind. The kindest thing to say is that on reflection the hon. Gentleman might wish that he had not said what in fact he said at the end of his supplementary question.
As to the assessment of the project, I have had some experience of assessments over the years, and all assessments of projects and their viability depend on

assumptions made about the size of the market, the spread of the market, the time at which the aircraft can enter into service and what its competitors are likely to be. In addition, we have to add now the uncertainties arising from the world energy crisis, the prospects for world trade and various other factors. With the best will in the world, it is not possible for a firm or for a Minister to say with any certainty exactly what are the economic prospects. One reason why we are seeing that the option is maintained is to ensure that these matters can be studied on an ongoing basis.

Mr. James Johnson: Bearing in mind that the Labour Party made an election pledge to nationalise the industry, is my right hon. Friend aware that his statement warms the hearts of hon. Members who have aircraft workers in their constituencies and of workers on the shop floor who, to be blunt, were a little anxious about what he would say today? With his detailed knowledge, does my right hon. Friend think that the aeroplane is a winner, as do the workers on the shop floor, and does he think it possible to make it? If he does not, we may see the demise of the civilian side of the aviation industry in the 1980s.

Mr. Benn: Never in anything I have said have I expressed any doubt about the design significance of the HS146 which, coming from a company with such a fine record of producing and selling good aircraft, must commend itself on first examination to anyone who looks at it. That was the approach I made, and until the early part of July I had every reason to believe that that was the attitude which the company adopted. That is the attitude which those who work on the aircraft have consistently adopted.
I repeat what I said earlier. I am in agreement with my hon. Friend that at a time of great uncertainty, public ownership may well be the best way of building confidence in an industry that could otherwise find itself caught up by short-run calculations of profitability that might not relate to the country's long-term future as an engineering nation. Similarly, if the Conservatives had not brought Rolls-Royce into public ownership, I doubt that the RB211ℰ524 would now be going ahead.

Mr. Parkinson: Will the right hon. Gentleman elaborate what he meant by maintaining design capability? He went on to say that it would involve relatively minor expenditure, and he spoke of jigs, drawings and tools. He did not mention people. The hon. Member for Welling and Hatfield (Mrs. Hayman) subsequently congratulated the right hon. Gentleman on keeping the design team together, but I do not think that he actually said that in his statement. I cannot see how the design team could be kept together with only relatively minor expenditure. Because many of my constituents are involved, I am anxious that the right hon. Gentleman should clear up what he means by "maintaining the design capability".

Mr. Benn: I repeat that the Government's decision, which I have announced today, is not to go for 100 per cent. funding at a cost of £120 million. I know the hon. Gentleman's concern, but he will realise that this is not the only project, even in Hawker Siddeley Aviation. I drew special attention to the jigs, drawings and tools because at one stage anxiety was expressed by those who work in the company that those jigs, drawings and tools might be lost. I thought it right to give that degree of reassurance in my statement today.

Mr. Dalyell: What sensible advice can be given to potential sub-contractors on the time scale of decisions?

Mr. Benn: I wish that I could help my hon. Friend on that. The sub-contractors had their sub-contracts unilaterally terminated by the company and I am not in a position, therefore, to say anything about the possible future in that regard. Clearly, the statement I have made today will be studied by the subcontractors, as I hope it will be by those who work in the industry.

Mr. Heseltine: The Secretary of State has consistently refused to answer a crucial question raised by, among others, my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit). The right hon. Gentleman tells us that he has done a detailed examination. What the House wants to know is how the advice that he has been given differs from the advice given to him by the company.

Mr. Benn: The company gave us its view based largely on rates of inflation. This was known because the company

made the statement itself. We have had to take into account, as best we can, all the factors I have mentioned in answer to earlier questions. A wide range of factors had to be taken into account. We have come to the conclusion that the 100 per cent. funding, after the renegotiation of sub-contracts at a higher level, would not be justified.

Mr. Heseltine: What is the figure?

Mr. Benn: If the hon. Gentleman will be patient, he will know that I ended my statement by saying that I felt that the House was entitled to fuller information. I put in that phrase consciously because when I was the Opposition spokesman on aviation I often used, unsuccessfully, to urge the same course on the hon. Gentleman.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: We must move on. We are in Private Members' time. I have allowed time for three statements and questions upon them, and I would remind the House that there will be an Adjournment debate on the subject of the HS 146 project on Thursday evening. Therefore, those hon. Members who have not been able to catch my eye today might like to listen to that debate.

OFFSHORE PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT (SCOTLAND) BILL

Mr. Grimond: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Could you assist the House on an important matter? I refer to the proceedings on the Offshore Petroleum Development (Scotland) Bill, which the Government intend to deal with on one day, namely tomorrow? Since there are 134 amendments in Committee on that Bill, some from the Government, is it not impossible and absurd to ask the House to take all the remaining stages of the Bill within one day? This would never have been suggested had it been an English Bill. Perhaps there has been some change of programme in this respect, but so far it has not been announced. Could I, through you, Mr. Speaker, ask the Government to announce any revised business for tomorrow?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Robert Mellish): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and in the absence of my right hon. Friend the


Leader of the House, may I inform hon. Members that the business remains exactly as was read out last Thursday and that the situation in regard to the Offshore Petroleum Development (Scotland) Bill remains the same. The House will start with the Committee stage on the Floor of the House and we shall see how we get on tomorrow.

BRITISH RAILWAYS (DISPUTE)

Sir Bernard Braine: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
the continued threat of traffic chaos on commuter lines in the Eastern Region and in the South-Eastern Division of Southern Region by unofficial 24-hour strikes which have been condemned by both British Rail and the National Union of Railwaymen.
I submit that this matter is specific because of deliberately planned but sporadic industrial action by signalmen in defiance of appeals by their union. Last month, one-hour stoppages not only created chaos during the rush hour but, coming as they did, so soon after the Birmingham bomb disaster, caused acute anxiety to commuters tightly packing the station concourse, because of fears of what might happen if a bomb alarm had been given in the area. I drew the attention of British Rail and the National Union of Railwaymen specifically to the fact that the strikers by their action were causing considerable risks.
Last Friday the unofficial action was stepped up and more than 200,000 commuters from Essex were without services for 24 hours. A spokesman for the strikers was reported to have said,
There will be a one-day strike next week and every week until our pay proposals are met.
He went on to say that he did not know which day the strikers would choose this week.
It was also reported that signalmen on the South-Eastern Division of the Southern Region, which controls the busy Kent and South-East London commuter lines, would strike on the same day. According to the Press, the strikers' leaders have since confirmed that such stoppages will continue.
Clearly the matter is of the utmost importance and within the purview of Standing Order No. 9 because these stoppages are being deliberately engineered and are causing and will cause acute discomfort and distress to thousands of innocent people who have no part in the dispute between British Rail and the signalmen. They interfere with people's work, disrupt family life, and cause appalling congestion on the roads and so on. Many of my constituents have written to me in despair over this matter and ask who is going to put an end to the growing anarchy which disrupts their lives.
I submit that they are entitled to know what view the Government take of these stoppages and what action they propose to take, in conjunction with British Rail and the railway unions, to deal with the situation.
I sought to raise this matter last week in the hope of persuading the Government to make a statement. No statement was made, and as far as I am aware there is no sign of any statement being made, unless Parliament asserts itself. It is for that reason that I beg to ask leave to raise the matter on the Adjournment of the House.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir B. Braine) gave me considerable notice of his intention to make an application under Standing Order No. 9 on the following matter:
the continued threat of traffic chaos on commuter lines in the Eastern Region and in the South-Eastern Division of Southern Region by unofficial 24-hour strikes which have been condemned by both British Rail and the National Union of Railwaymen.
The House will recognise that this is entirely a procedural matter for me. I have to decide whether I am willing to interrupt the business to allow the House to discuss this matter. I am afraid the answer is, "No".
I am sure that what the hon. Gentleman said will have been heard by those in authority, but as far as I am concerned, the answer is "No".

Mr. Channon: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Nobody is challenging your ruling, but this is a matter of great public importance and concern to many hundreds of thousands of people. Would it be in order to ask you, Sir, to draw this matter to the attention of the right


hon. Gentleman the Patronage Secretary so that he may ask his right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport to make a statement if this situation on the railways persists?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Robert Mellish): I shall convey what has happened to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport.

JUVENILE CRIME

4.36 p.m.

Mr. Roger Sims: I beg to move,
That this House instructs Her Majesty's Government to treat as a matter of urgency the provision of adequate facilities for dealing with young offenders and to set up a departmental committee to inquire into the operation of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969.
Before I embark on my task I should like, on behalf of back benchers, to protest at the manner in which this debate has been delayed for an hour because the Government have chosen to make three statements in Private Members' time.
When I tabled the motion originally it included the phrase "alarming increase in juvenile crime". I accept that that was not in order, although I still believe that it was not an inaccurate description of the situation.
I shall not burden the House with detailed quotations from criminal statistics which hon. Members no doubt have had full opportunity to study. However, perhaps I should put forward a few figures which are worth quoting.
Of all the crimes of violence that occurred in 1970, just under 12 per cent. were perpetrated by young persons under the age of 17. In 1973 the figure rose to 15½ per cent. In 1970 just under 38 per cent. of all burglary offences were committed by juveniles; last year the figure was 43 per cent. In 1970, 28 per cent. of all robbery offences were committed by juveniles; last year the figure rose to over 40 per cent.
The problem of juvenile crime is particularly serious in the conurbations. The Metropolitan Police report that their arrests for indictable offences overall in the period 1969–73 increased by 18 per cent.; the number of arrests of juveniles for indictable offences rose by 40 per cent. Last year of all the arrests for burglary, in the Metropolitan Police district 52·5 per cent. were by juveniles; for robbery and theft, 39 per cent. were by juveniles; for wounding and assaults, 14 per cent. were by juveniles; as to offences involving motor vehicles, 41 per cent. were committed by juveniles. Similar figures can be quoted for areas such as Liverpool and Birmingham.
Unhappily, there is no sign of the situation improving this year. The Metropolitan Police figures indicate that in the first six months of this year there was a 25 per cent. increase in juvenile offences.
These figures are frightening and serious. They are serious, first, because they represent suffering to those on whom violence has been inflicted, and pain and distress to those whose homes have been burgled or cars stolen. They are serious because the children involved in these offences influence other children. They are serious because if only a proportion of today's juvenile delinquents become tomorrow's hardened criminals, the prospects for law and order are poor.
We could, of course, discuss at some length the reason for this situation, but possibly the decline in adult standards of conduct and an apparent decline in the importance of family life must be held to some extent responsible. Being a parent is not an easy job, as any hon. Member knows. It is a curious fact that in an age when training and qualifications are required for virtually all jobs, no training is required to be a parent. Indeed even having a permanent partner is not considered an essential qualification. Perhaps some of the new ideas in education, such as free expression, have not necessarily helped to inculcate the values of self-discipline and consideration for others. If companies are prepared to spend enormous sums of money on television advertising in order to influence us, could it be that some of the things seen on television influence less sophisticated and less discriminating children?
My particular concern today, however, is to examine how we deal with children and young people who, either of their own volition or as victims of circumstances, get into trouble or in some way come to the attention of the authorities. I want to look at how we deal with children who may be at the beginning of a road which could lead to a life of crime if they are not properly handled.
At the heart of the matter is the Children and Young Persons Act 1969. I invite the House to join me in taking a critical look at how that Act is operating —"critical", I hasten to add, in no partisan sense. It was a Labour Government who passed the Act and a Conservative Government who implemented

it, and now it is a Labour Government who are responsible for ensuring that it it operating satisfactorily. I venture to suggest that it is not.
It is fair to say that the Act was introduced in an atmosphere of some controversy. There was criticism by magistrates, probation officers and others, whose advice, unhappily, was in many respects ignored. The timing of the implementation of the Act was particularly unfortunate because it brought social workers far more into the field of juvenile delinquency at a time when the social services were undergoing the Seebohm reorganisation. I shall not comment on the wisdom of turning specialist social workers into what are technically known, I believe, as generic workers. But it meant that social workers who had been accustomed to dealing mainly with old people or with mentally-handicapped folk were thrust into juvenile work, which included court appearances and accepting new responsibilities in unfamiliar circumstances. For many, Seebohm was followed by further local government reorganisation.
Another difficulty was that the Act visualised that there would be some sort of national scheme of community homes. Such a scheme did not exist in 1971 and, indeed, it started only nominally in April of this year, and much of it is a scheme simply on paper. But notwithstanding these difficulties, the Act was implemented, and, if it has its faults, it certainly has its merits.
When I was appointed to a juvenile court some 12 years ago, we were handling two categories of children. There were those who were before the court for committing criminal offences and there were those who came before us as being in need of care and protection. I had not been sitting on the court long before I realised that this distinction was not accurate. It did not always reflect the true situation. When one read the reports on certain offenders and learned their backgrounds, one was surprised that they had not been before the court earlier, and one could only wish that the authorities had known of the circumstances of their homes at a much earlier date. When one was considering care cases, one often realised that it was sheer chance that the children of the family had not


been involved in offences on earlier occasions.
I believe that the Act was right to remove that distinction between the two types. It recognised that many children needed treatment and care rather than punishment. It recognised that offences are sometimes simply a symptom of a disturbed condition.
I remember particularly an occasion when, having had before me a lad who admitted shoplifting, we adjourned the case for two or three weeks for reports and let him go home. Two days later he went into one of the local stores and walked out concealing under his jacket— not at all well—a large table lamp. Fortunately, he walked out straight into the arms of a policeman. If ever there were a case of the psychiatrist's cry for help, that was it. This time he did not go home. We put him into appropriate surroundings.
However, the Act failed in some respects. It failed to recognise the distinction between the child for whom mild punishment, supervision or care is appropriate, and the child who is a real delinquent and needs more disciplined training. Nor did the Act recognise that even the purely mischievous child needs and, indeed, expects a structure of rules and sanctions to which, in his own interests as well as those of the community, he should conform.
The Children and Young Persons Act deprived juvenile courts of many powers. I am bound to comment that it was a pity that in this particular manner we have discarded the experience of magistrates in dealing with children. Apparently it was no longer considered of value.
What powers remain to the juvenile courts? They can impose a fine. But there is no sanction whatsoever for nonpayment of the fine. So Johnny, having appeared before the court and been fined, says that he will pay at the rate of 50p a week, but he does not pay, and there is nothing whatsoever that the court can do about it. It cannot enforce that fine until the lad is 17. The court knows it, and the boy knows it. That is the sort of thing which brings the law into disrepute.
The juvenile courts can impose a supervision order. For those who may not be familiar with that, I say that it is not dissimilar to a probation order, but attached to it are no conditions. It simply means that the child is under the supervision of a social worker or a probation officer. A probation order has attached to it certain conditions—that the probationer must be industrious, must be of good behaviour, must report to the probation officer, and so on. If those conditions are broken, the probationer can be brought back to the court and dealt with in some other way. But in the case of a supervision order, there are no conditions whatsoever and the only sanction available if the order is not abided by is simply a care order.
Incidentally, I hope that in phasing out probation officers for supervision orders and replacing them with social workers we are doing the wise thing. Of course I have a great respect for the work of social workers. Indeed, I pay tribute to the work they have been doing in the last few years in particularly difficult circumstances. But I think that it is a pity to deprive children of the guidance of trained and experienced probation officers, at least until there is an adequate supply of similarly trained and similarly experienced social workers.
Third, the juvenile court has power to impose a care order. This is made in the form of an interim order—a remand for reports until the matter can be further considered—or it may be a care order as such, as a final decision. But this simply means handing over the child to the local authority. The court has no control whatsoever over the disposal of that child. Although the adult equivalent would be a remand in custody or some form of custodial sentence, there is no means whatsoever of the court indicating what the disposal of the child should be.
One might assume that if the court thought that the child would be best at home, it would make a supervision order. But if it makes a care order it surely is indicating that it thinks that the child should be in custody. However, whatever the court's wishes, it has no powers to ensure this. Therefore, the child who is the subject of a care order may, in fact, finish up at home.
There are various reasons why that child may finish up at home. It may be simply that the social worker in whose care he is entrusted does not think that a custodial setting is appropriate, whatever the court may have thought. It may be that the community homes which have been approached are either unable or unwilling to accept that child. Or it may be that the child has been placed in a community home and has absconded simply because there is inadequate provision for the child who is determined to abscond.
Whatever happens when any of those three courses have been adopted, the result is that the child is at liberty again and it can commit more offences. In due course, it will be arrested and it will come back to court. All that the court can do is to make a care order. Thus the cycle is repeated, because the courts have no powers and because the accommodation available is inadequate or under-used. I am not saying simply that this sort of thing can happen; I am saying that it does happen, and that it happens all too often.
I have a letter from a chairman of a juvenile court in Hampshire. Part of the letter states:
Several years after the Act coming into force there is still no provision for difficult cases. There is not even a lockable room in our area, let alone a secure wing or secure establishment where a persistent absconder, obstreperous or violent child can be contained either on remand or after sentence….
The magistrate explains the case of a boy found guilty of indecent assault who, before coming to court, had been to a local hospital for a few hours and seen a doctor briefly.
We took care in court to go into the home background and it appeared to us that supervision by the parents, if the boy should return home, was quite inadequate.
In the presence of the representative of the social services and the boy's solicitor we made it quite clear that in the interests of himself and of the public he should go back to the hospital for three weeks for full reports by two doctors, and appear before us again … in three weeks' time.
The boy was allowed to go straight home where he committed two more serious offences.
There was a case in Rugby of a boy who appeared before a juvenile court, charged with armed robbery, shooting at a policeman who pursued him and planting

a fire bomb in a school, and posting a petrol bomb. The magistrates refused bail and, in fact he was remanded into the care of Warwickshire County Council to await trial. Two days later the department allowed him to return home, where he attempted to kill his mother.
There was also a case of a boy in Nottingham who committed 42 burglaries in three months while supposedly in the care of the local authority. A recent case which received publicity arose in Stock-port. It concerned a 13-year-old boy who had broken into 250 houses and cars and stolen £7,000 worth of goods while in the care of the local authority. Only last week a judge was protesting in the case of a boy aged 11 who pleaded guilty to causing the death of an elderly woman by dangerous driving of a stolen car. The boy had been the subject of a care order. The judge said:
I wish the appropriate authorities would draw to the attention of the Home Secretary that the previous care order plainly failed.
I am endeavouring to do just that.
Another case concerned a 14-year-old boy in care who absconded and committed dozens of burglaries. He came before a court, was put back into care and started again committing more burglaries. There are similar complaints from all over the country. I have letters from areas including Cheltenham, Watford, Ipswich, Stock-port, Newport, Bath, Pontefract, Reading and Colchester. I fancy that the Home Office file on this matter is even larger than mine.
I have said that the court has few powers, but it has certain other powers which it has to use, because of the situation I have described. Older boys can be sent to a Crown court with a view to undergoing Borstal training, and this is happening. The figures for boys being sent to Borstal are going up. We do not welcome this, because the success rate of Borstal suggests that it is not an ideal way to dispose of lads of this sort. But sometimes it has to be done because there is no other way of dealing with the boys.
A court can also issue a certificate of unruliness in respect of a particularly difficult child. This means that if the child is on remand and such a certificate has been issued, the authorities are bound to find some form of secure accommodation, but too little of this is available. Indeed,


this is sometimes so limited that prison is the only accommodation available for children. Recently, a magistrate in Camden protested at the fact that a girl of 15 appeared before her on remand from Holloway prison. A report on the matter in The Times state:
Only the last-minute offer of a temporary place at a remand home yesterday prevented the girl's return to Holloway… The social worker in charge of the case had made up to thirty fruitless calls to other homes and adolescent units at mental hospitals.
At present, there are probably between 20 and 30 children in prison. The numbers are small, but is it not dreadful that four years after this House has passed reforming legislation we are putting children into prison?
I cannot believe that the Home Secretary and his Minister of State, who have a reputation for progressive views in this matter, can preside happily over such a state of affairs.
Another area where the courts' powers are very much limited is in school attendance. The Act requires a double standard of proof; it must be proved to the satisfaction of the court not only that the child is not receiving education but also that it is in need of such care that it would not receive unless a care order was made. The result is that fewer cases of non-attendance at school are coming before the courts, and when they do come before the courts the only course open to the courts is a supervision order or a care order with the limitations that I have described.
At the moment there are a number of children who are subject to supervision or care orders who are still truanting. Before the 1969 Act was passed, juvenile courts had the power to fine the parents. This they can no longer do. Before the 1969 Act there was an overall power to make an approved school order for truanters. It was a power that was little used but it was an effective deterrent.
Many a time I have had a lad before me in court and I have said to him, "Now, you realise, Johnny, what is to happen to you if you do not go to school?". The boy replied, "Yes, sir, I will be put away." I have said, "Right, we are going to adjourn this matter for six weeks. If you go to school regularly and we hear in six weeks that you have

been going to school regularly, you will hear no more about it. But if we hear that you have not been going to school regularly, you will be brought back and you know what will happen to you." The boy has replied, "Yes, Sir." We rarely see such boys again. That was an effective deterrent. But it is a power which the juvenile court no longer has.
I hope I have said enough to illustrate the shortcomings of the Act, after operating for four years, to justify the request in my motion for a review of it. I am aware that a sub-committee of the Expenditure Committee has been looking at the operation of the Act. I have no wish to discredit the work of the subcommittee. I fear that the members must have found the work frustrating by being interrupted by two General Elections. It is necessarily a small subcommittee, and its terms of reference are limited and do not cover the question of the court's powers. It can spend only a limited time on the subject.
I urge that a larger body, such as a departmental committee comprising people with knowledge and experience in the magistracy, judiciary, and probation and social services be set up. Such a committee could review the Act, particularly the aspects to which I have drawn attention, and report. But any such review, whatever form it might take, will be bound to take time, and the situation I have described calls for action without delay. I therefore ask the Government to initiate such action.
I urge the Government to treat as a matter of urgency the provision of adequate accommodation, especially secure accommodation. I accept that there are financial restraints at present, but I believe that I have illustrated the need for priority to be given to this matter. I am delighted that the Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Security is present. Is the DHSS satisfied that the existing homes are being properly and fully used? Are the 120 former approved schools fully occupied? Cannot some of these approved schools have minor work carried out to make them secure? How many places are there in secure units? The figure I have is 42. I should like to have that confirmed. I hope the House will agree that that figure is far too low.
Could not the Home Secretary restore to juvenile courts some of the powers of which the Act deprived them? The principle of juvenile courts remains as laid out in the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, that the court shall have regard to the welfare of the child or young person, but the courts are frustrated in their efforts.
I suggest, first, that the courts have the right to make attendance centre or detention centre orders for non-payment of fines. Why not make parents guarantee those fines? Incidentally, I wonder whether a £10 maximum fine for children is adequate today. I suggest that the Home Secretary makes it possible to incorporate provisions such as a residential requirement into supervision orders. Section 18 of the Act empowers the Home Secretary to do exactly that, and I urge him to use it. I suggest that he allows the court to order custody when it believes that this is required. I suspect that this might well help the social worker who at present has to decide whether the child is to go into custody, and this must surely affect the social worker's relationship with his client.
Surely the wardens of community homes can be obliged to accept children for whom care orders have been made. There would be uproar in the Press and in the House if prison governors refused to accept adults sent to prison by the courts. Why should the situation be different with children?
I plead for action on the question of truancy, for it is from truancy that delinquency so often stems. A survey in my local court of the cases that have come up in the last four months showed that in 80 per cent. of cases the boys, and in some cases girls, were truanting and that in 70 per cent. of cases the offences actually occurred while the children were truanting. I think that those figures are fairly typical.
May we have from the Home Office some clarification of this double standard of proof? Surely if the child is not attending school and if the Education Act puts responsibility for attendance at school on the parents, the fact that the child is not at school proves that he is not receiving care which he would receive if an order were made, and it is, therefore, possible for proceedings to be taken.

It would be an improvement if proceedings could be taken, and taken much earlier than now.
I suggest, too, that the court be empowered in such cases to fine the parents and, where necessary, to make a custodial order. It may be outside the scope of the Children and Young Persons Act, but surely it would help if the police were empowered to deal with suspected truants. At present, if a policeman sees half-a-dozen lads knocking around the high street during school hours, he can merely ask a few questions. Would it not be ideal if in certain circumstances the policeman were given the right to detain the lads for a few hours and to make a few inquiries?
All the proposals I have made are practicable, and they are practicable ways of dealing with juvenile crime. Most of the proposals could be instituted promptly.
We are faced with a growing and serious problem which is of concern to every Member of the House and to thousands outside who have to deal with it. It is to cope with this situation that I make these proposals. It is to encourage discussion and action that I move the motion. I do so in a constructive spirit and I hope that in that same spirit the House will accept the motion and that the Government will not only accept it but will act upon it.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): Before I call the next speaker, may I remind the House that this is a very brief debate and that a large number of hon. Members wish to speak.

5.3 p.m.

Mr. Paul B. Rose: I welcome the very constructive way in which the hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) moved the motion. He rendered a service to the whole House and, I am sure, to future generations of young people who may well face the prospect of coming before the courts.
However, there is always a temptation and a tendency to treat crime—not least juvenile crime—as a problem in isolation. the result may be to elevate the procedure of the courts and the punishment meted out by the courts to the level


of a cure rather than seeing it as a confession of the failure of society at an earlier stage. It is rather tempting to attack the symptoms rather than to diagnose and deal with the real causes of juvenile crime in society.
This is not to deny that the symptoms should be dealt with and, indeed, treated. Indeed, the lack of seriousness and severity in the courts, the leniency which has of necessity to be exercised by the juvenile courts, may be criticised in the case of perhaps 20 per cent. of more serious offences, and that gives rise to serious concern and serious misgivings, which were rightly expressed by the hon. Gentleman.
A review of the working of the 1969 Act is desirable. This applies in respect of the segment of offences that I categorise as the serious 20 per cent. The overwhelming majority of delinquents come from disadvantaged and from deprived families in our society. During the 12 years I have spent in the courts practising at the Bar I have yet to come across more than one youngster whom I have defended where deviant behaviour could not be traced back to his family background and to parental discord. Nor is it any secret that there are areas of our cities which are well known for their tendency to produce an abnormally high proportion of young delinquents.
Recognising that that is so, one must look at the social causes. There is, therefore, a connection between crime and family background, particularly with the poorest families, with families where marriages have broken down, and frequently where rejection of a child follows remarriage.
There is undoubtedly a connection between crime and the break-up of old-established communities where there were sanctions that no longer exist, sanctions that were imposed by the norms of society. The anonymity of the large modern housing estates, particularly the high-rise developments in the centres of many of our cities, makes often for a breeding ground of delinquency.
I believe that there is equally a connection between the absence of facilities —or often the absence of the motivation to use facilities—for recreation of a type which can tap responsibility, enthusiasm

and initiative. I am not thinking here of the old type of paternalistic attitude towards young people.
There is a special problem again among many unemployed school leavers and those sections of society which, for one reason or another, tend to be discriminated against when they come on to the labour market.
We have, therefore, the context of a society which not only has those social problems but in which material success is regarded as the object of life. The hon. Member for Chislehurst mentioned television. Almost every television commercial carries a message which I believe is objectionable and damaging, because it promotes the ethic of acquisition of material goods, of gratification of immediate physical and material desires, rather than any sort of moral value.
If that is the ethos in which young people are reared, it is inevitable that it will have a result upon them. When they see, for example, the gross inequalities of wealth at the same time as advertisements of the type I have described, that is an obscenity which must serve to emphasise the sort of ethos in which they are reared and the consequence in their deviant behaviour.
We can add to that the fact that educational deprivation exists precisely in those areas of the greatest need. That will only exacerbate the problem. There is little outlet—I think this generation should be aware of this—for the aggressive impulse we all have. Those of us who were born and reared during the Second World War, as I was, will remember that there was little delinquency, but at that time our young men were fighting for a cause in which violence was an outlet which does not exist today.
This is a matter which perhaps the older generation should bear in mind when considering the conduct of, say, my Stretford-enders at Old Trafford, Manchester, or, again, the misplaced hysteria and misplaced idealism of some of the demonstrations by young people today, which is perhaps the rather insensate manifestation of group loyalty. These are forms of idealism which are unacceptable and anti-social in our society but which, when they were channelled in another direction, were acceptable.
Nevertheless the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right when he refers to this as a serious problem. Theft, vandalism and violence rather than serious organised crime are the offences with which we are concerned. Unhappily those who start with petty offences graduate into more serious offences, and it is the persistent and serious offender rather than the occasional offender with whom we are concerned.
I agree that there is a rather artificial distinction between those in need of care, on the one hand, and those in need of treatment, on the other, because the two must go together. The hon. Member for Chislehurst has put his finger on the failure of the new system of powers of the court to provide for the more serious offender. There is insufficient power to deal with that sort of person.
I frequently wish that the sanction which the court has at present could be imposed not on the offender but on the parents. The hon. Gentleman referred to the payment of fines. There have been times when I have sat through proceedings in court and wished that the parents could have been dealt with as the encouragers and almost the instigators and fined heavily. I put that forward as a matter for serious consideration.
The care order is not the answer in the absence of the local authority being able to deal with the problem. It may take a person who is sent to it by the court, but that is to take away what ought to be the power of the court in deciding on the treatment and remedy— words which I use rather than "punishment"—of the child. That is where the responsibility should lie. In attempting to deal with this problem in terms of treatment we leaned over too far in 1969 in that direction rather than providing for the kind of secure environment which is needed for these young people.
I was impressed by a report that I read in The Guardian dealing with this problem, referring to the Director of the New York Centre for Residential Security Design, Mr. Oscar Newman, and showing that in New York—I am sure this applies in this country as well, and I ask our Home Office to undertake serious studies —the incidence of crime increases according to the height of residential accommodation, and that in poor families the incidence increases even more. Where

there were 40 such crimes per thousand in three to four-storey buildings, the figure rose to 75 with six to seven floors, and 100 in blocks of more than 10 storeys. In middle-income and well-structured households, the rates were 18, 35 and 55 respectively. I suggest that we ought to embark seriously on research into the way in which we plan our cities because that has a definite effect on the rate of crime.
One of the consequences—one sees this in the conurbations—is the way in which local authorities shuffle off the problem by putting problem families in one area. When they do that, the area becomes intolerable. Tenants want to move out, and this accentuates the problem within that area. Even within my own city of Manchester I have come across this tendency to concentrate those families into one area. One finds in those flats not a lift working, all the windows broken, and the better families wanting to move out.
It is vitally important that the right sort of social planning is undertaken in addition to an approach to the problem through the courts. One needs an integrated approach and, therefore, housing policy is vital. In my pleasant constituency of Blackley old ladies come to me frightened out of their minds about youths and girls who shout obscenities at them, throw stones at their doors, put lighted papers through their letter boxes and so on. The lack of provision within the community for a genuine outlet for the energy of these young people must be studied seriously.
On the other side, we must look at the provision for persistent offenders. That has to be parallelled by the increase—and this is a matter which will be debated later—in the status that we can afford to our police forces, the wages we pay them and the kind of calibre that we draw into the police forces in our recruiting.
If the serious offender is brought before the court, as has been pointed out by the hon. Member for Chislehurst, there are inadequate facilities. It is outrageous that young people, even older girls, should be kept in a place like Holloway. This can have nothing but a harmful; effect on them. Very often this is a procedure which is quite wrongly adopted by the courts, when waiting for a medicall or psychiatric or social inquiry report.


Therefore, we need secure community houses of the sort to which the hon. Gentleman referred.
On a happier note, one can see what good community facilities can do before people begin to commit crime, whereby their energies are channelled, for instance, into the local judo or boxing club or into table tennis and such activities. I have pulled many a muscle trying to vie with some of the youngsters in those activities. That is the sort of combined approach that I should like to see.
I have no objection to something analogous to a detention centre. Indeed, I should have thought that was the most appropriate way on a Saturday afternoon of dealing with a certain category of offender who might be deprived of what otherwise would be his greatest pleasure. If we are to give juvenile courts adequate powers to deal with serious and persistent offenders who need treatment, we need institutions which create the atmosphere of self-discipline, which teach skills and the routine of work. They ought not to be what I would call a soft option. They ought to be looked at in the light of treatment rather than punishment. But they must not be a joy ride.
Something akin to a period of detention, with this more positive approach to the social and emotional problems of young children which are often manifested in the commission of crime, is the way in which I would like to see the courts and the Home Office approach the problem. The range of options in our penal system is far too limited. For youngsters the care of the local authority is absolutely inadequate. The juvenile court needs to be able itself to order the detention of youngsters in an institution which has a positively remedial aim, combining the equipment for an eventual return to society with, at the same time, not being a soft option. It means the replacement of many of our older penal establishments.
How many of us will speak from a platform at election time asking for money to be spent on this objective? All too often at election time we hear loose talk about bringing back the cat and hanging. "Bring back hanging and end vandalism" was the slogan I heard at the last election, as if the two had the

remotest connection. It is that sort of confused and emotive thinking which has done a great deal of harm to a positive and integrated approach to the problem of crime. There is a reluctance to attack the social roots of crime, to examine the family environment and moral standards of society in which we live. We have tipped the scales too far in the treatment of children, possible because we have failed to realise that young children today are more mature than they were a generation ago, that they develop rather more quickly and are more sophisticated and more aware of the world in which they live.
I shall not go in detail, as the hon. Gentleman did, into the workings of the juvenile courts with which he is so familiar. I find them, on the whole, to be considerate and humane yet firm within their terms of reference. But they cannot control that segment of those who come before them for whom proper training of, say, the detention centre sort would be appropriate.
My plea, therefore, is not only that punishment must fit the crime but that we should begin to eradicate the causes of crime. We should analyse, discover and isolate those causes—otherwise, constructive though the hon. Gentleman was in initiating this debate, we shall indulge in a sterile exercise in indignation rather than a positive attempt to reduce the incidence of deviant behaviour among young people.
I welcome the opportunity which the hon. Gentleman has given us to express our views about a situation which is causing increasing concern, especially in our large cities, for it is a social problem which needs attacking, but attacking not only in the courts but at its social roots as well.

5.21 p.m.

Mrs. Jill Knight: The winning of a place in the Ballot for Private Members' motions is a precious prize. It is even more rare and remarkable for two private Members quite independently, each knowing nothing of what the other was doing, to choose the same subject for a Private Member's motion and to win a place in the Ballot. All unknowing of what my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) intended to do, I put down a motion on


the same subject. This is indicative of the strength of concern felt by many of us on both sides, representing all parts of the United Kingdom, about the working of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969.
I remember an old saying, "As the sprig is bent so the tree will grow". Too many sprigs today are very bent. Of all the black clouds over the future, none is more menacing than the thousands of fairly hardened young criminals who roam London and our big cities, and the cloud is so menacing because of its implications for the future. We have thieves of 12, burglars of 13, prostitutes of 14, muggers of 15, wreckers and vandals of 16. What sort of men and women will they grow up to be?
I am sure that all the experience we have had since 1969 shows that the Children and Young Persons Act of that year has failed disastrously. Sometimes, I think "Heaven defend us all from theorists and experts ". So frequently we have the advice of those who believe utterly sincerely in their advice, because they have read it in a book and they have worked it all out on paper, that if we take a certain set of steps such-and-such result will inevitably follow. But it does not.
I sometimes wonder whether those who say that it is always better to have treatment rather than punishment have ever brought up a family. As someone who has, I am well aware that when a child commits a misdemeanour, a well placed spank on that part of the anatomy which a far-sighted Deity has provided for the occasion is far more salutary than giving the child treatment, whatever that may mean. I have two sons, and on occasion —not many occasions, I hasten to say; I can remember only four or five—the well placed spank was administered, and I believe that they are better young men for it today.
There is no doubt about the well-intentioned way in which the Act began, but it started life with several serious misconceptions about how best to deal with young offenders. One such misconception was that informal action out of court would be better than formal action in court. In practice, action out of court has meant no action at all in a substantial number of cases.
I have here the reported comment of a London magistrate on that very point. Her words were prefaced by a passage in a newspaper article about social workers, as follows:
The role of magistrates has been taken over by local social services departments, whose officers in general lack specialised knowledge of juvenile offenders. They are also responsible for all other social matters ranging from the problems of the homeless to old people. While they have the authority to return an unco-operative offender in their care to a juvenile court for further punishment, they are reluctant to do so".
Now comes the comment from the magistrate:
They do not like admitting failure. It is misguided thinking which is bound to instil false standards in a child. They take advantage of loose supervision. A probation officer would rarely hesitate to bring a persistently bad boy or girl back to us.
Another misconception with which the Act started its life was that custody orders should no longer be made because social service departments would be better able to cope with and deter the young offender than would magistrates. As the magistrate whose words I quoted a moment ago showed, this simply is not true. It has proved to be a grave misjudgment. I believe that social workers in general have a serious lack of that specialised knowledge of what makes juvenile offenders tick which magistrates and probation officers have in abundance.
Social workers are often wonderful people, but they are the chameleons of administration, official jacks-of-all-trades, as it were, and they are out of their depth all too often when dealing with young offenders. Together, the magistrate and the probation officer used to deal wisely and effectively with these youngsters. But now magistrates have no power to do so, and the probation officer is not only not responsible to the court but no longer deals with juveniles at all, only with adults.
How stupid, when juvenile crime is worrying most of us, that one of the key figures in dealing with the situation should be put off the job of dealing with youngsters and now copes only with adults. The courts today have no power to say where an offender ought to go. It is the social services department which decides, and all too often the child is sent home.
The former approved schools now have power to refuse admittance to known trouble-makers and absconders. This is a serious matter. Recently, one 14-year-old West Indian girl was turned down by no fewer than 34 children's homes. My hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst referred to this extraordinary rule, and extraordinary it is. One cannot believe that it is in the best interest of the child, for what in the world does such a child make of the fact that it is turned down for 34 different places? The system takes no account of the effect on the child of that stupid rule. Moreover, though it seems incredible, it is often the worst cases which achieve their objective in being sent home simply because no one will have them.
The same applies to the under-15s for whom Borstal is not allowed and in respect of whom a detention centre order cannot be made unless there is a place available. Usually, of course, there is no place. The courts must have power at least to deal with the hard-core minority. I am certain that it was wrong to take that power from the courts and to give it to the social services department, and we must reverse that. Courts should be able to make a care order with a direction that the offender be detained in secure accommodation.
Before the 1969 Act, the juvenile court could require a local authority to find a place in a remand home. That was the responsibility of the local authority, and it had to do it. It often entailed telephone calls to a good many homes, but the job was done because the responsibility was placed on the local authority's shoulders. The courts should still be able to do that. But this means that we must have more secure unit places—we are very short of them—and we must have more special schools.
It is said by some that we must have more community home places, but I am not sure about that, and I am a little worried. The number of places in our existing community homes has been sharply cut down, and what looks from the outside to be an overcrowded situation is not in fact overcrowded in relation to what used to be the position under a different rule. In my constituency I have

a community home which used to hold 146 boys. It now holds 75.
It is exactly the same place, the same buildings, but it will take only 75 youngsters instead of 146. If anyone suggests that a 76th child should be sent there, he is told that that is impossible because that will be overcrowding. It always used to take that number, and I cannot understand why the number of places in existing homes should be reduced in this way.
There is a severe shortage of staff, but to what extent has that taken place as the ratio of children to staff has been altered? Each member of staff used to have to cope with many more children than now, and even that was not a large number.
A justice of the peace from Camden said recently that the Act was unworkable. The Education Welfare Officers' Association used the same word. The Magistrates' Association has made its views on the subject absolutely plain. I believe that the police are disheartened by the apparent futility of arrest and prosecution. I cite the case of one 14-year-old boy who has had 18 court appearances since he was 11 years old. These consist of 10 charges of burglary and 10 of theft. On each occasion the police have tracked him down, found that he perpetrated the crime and have taken him to court. He has been conditionally discharged 10 times and the only punishment he has ever had is through fines which together total £5. He is now in care, but it seems rather late in the day.
Another persistent young offender first came to police notice in April 1969 at the age of 12. Between then and February 1973 he was brought before the court 10 times, and each time he was given a conditional discharge. He was arrested again in January this year and finally he went to Borstal. One policeman who dealt with the case said that that had happened far too late in the boy's career to have any remedial effect.
These young offenders must be caught quickly, and on this score the police do their part. They are brought before a court, but the system sends them away again. That might be done for the very best of motives; indeed, I have no doubt that it is. But young offenders are denied


the treatment which could turn them from their path of crime.
In the case I was citing a policeman said that what had happened to the boy had had a marked effect on the other members of the family. The boy's eldest brother had been arrested on 10 charges. He had had eight conditional discharges for various criminal offences. This is a ridiculous situation.
Time is short, and I wish to be brief, so I shall restrict myself to one or two other points. The first concerns fines. If a fine is imposed on a child of 16 it is unenforceable until that child is 17 and is subject to the jurisdiction of the adult court. One could attempt to deal with it by attachment of earnings, but I understand that this is nearly always impossible. If the parent is brought into the matter, which seems a good idea, it is often found that the parent is alone, because many of these children come from one-parent families. Often that parent is on social security and it is extremely difficult to see how to impose a fine which will be paid.
We must take care to make a clearer distinction between the child in need and the young offender. The Act blurs these two categories, and I think to the disadvantage of both.
I agree that we want more personnel and more accommodation. We want, too, a change in the rules and possibly a return of the old probation order. I do no think that the supervision order is the right thing. One thing which worries me is that sending to a detention centre as a punishment is imposed only if a vacancy exists. Unless a defendant has already been represented by a lawyer, the offer of legal aid must be made before a child is sent to detention. Instead of a boy being sent immediately from the court to a detention centre where he will receive the correct treatment after the hearing, he has to be remanded for legal representation either on bail or in care. It could be a week or more before those developments materialise and the boy might have that period added to the three months detention. He could therefore be longer in custody as a result of the compulsory offer of legal aid, and that is stupid.
These are detailed points, but the case has been made for the Act to be looked

at and amended. This must be done for the sake of the public. It is all very well saying that a child has had a bad home, but if he is sent away from the court so that he can do burglaries again, what about the people he burgles? The public need protection from these children. I am sure that the Act is not providing the answer for the child that we all hoped it might provide when it became law. We know that the magistrates are appalled at the Act. It is time, moreover, that attention was paid to the objections that the police have to it.

5.36 p.m.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: I congratulate the hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) on initiating the debate and on the reasoned arguments he put forward. I hope the House will accept the motion. I remind the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) that many of the points she is making were made before 1969 and many people were equally unhappy then that the right solution had not been found. We should look at the Act with a view to improving it and making it work rather than from an attitude of out-and-out criticism.
The emphasis in the Act of moving the job of assessment from the magistrate to the trained social worker was very good provided that the trained social worker was given the choices. The tragedy is that we have given the social worker the choices but we have failed to make the necessary provision, so that he cannot send a young offender to an assessment centre because there are no places available.
The magistrates certainly need more facilities to enforce fines. Possibly we need a system by which the fine is substantially increased if it is not paid in weekly instalments before the child reaches 17, at which age it can be enforced. The offender would then realise that if he did not pay it at the right time, eventually he would have to pay much more.
One of the fundamental points which should be written into a supervision order is that anyone of school age should attend school regularly. Unfortunately, many social workers do not seem to attach great importance to this aspect. I know


from experience that bad school attendance is one of the first steps to juvenile crime. A supervision order should ensure that a child attends school regularly up to the statutory school leaving age.
The magistrates should have far better facilities for remanding offenders in custody. Recently in Stockport a boy was brought to the courts by the police and was put into the care of the local authority. He was taken away by the social worker but he slipped out of the back of the court building and was away. It was several days before the police could apprehend him again. If a social worker is to work with a young person he must be able to hold that young person for sufficiently long to talk to him and to establish some contact. Therefore on occasions it should be made easier for magistrates to remand in custody so that a relationship can be established.
We must also examine the misuse of the detention centre. At least two magistrates told me recently that they had to wait until the boy reached the age of 15, and they were almost thinking of ways of deferring the case until he reached that magical age and then sending him to a detention centre. A three-month sentence normally works out at two months. If that sentence does not succeed, the court is left with 10 months with nothing else to impose. There should be a careful examination of the way in which detention centres are used. It should not be necessary to wait until the magical age of 15 to use them. Their use should be more flexible.
Another weakness that magistrates feel very strongly is that they do not have the power or authority to press for a place in the assessment centre. In the old magistrates' court the clerk would ring round to find a place, and he was in a position to put pressure on the Home Office. The social worker, who has the same task, has nothing like as much authority to press for a place. The magistrates think that it would be far better if they were in a position to back up the social worker by doing the pressing.
In Stockport, one very able juvenile magistrate has resigned because of the frustration he felt. He believed that his work was hampered because the magistrates did not have those facilities. I

am sure that other people who might be willing to serve on the juvenile bench are also discouraged. That is a tragedy.
The other weakness is that the Act took away some of the financial responsibility from central Government and placed it on the local authorities. That is unfortunate, in view of the pressure that local authorities are under because of the problem of rating. In 1969, the better local authorities were ready to meet the provisions of the Act. But almost as soon as it started to be implemented, they had the Seebohm reorganisation. No sooner had that begun to settle down than most local authorities in England and Wales were further reorganised. During that reorganisation a great deal of the prevention work previously being done with children of eight, nine, 10 and 11 by the better local authorities was not done, and in many ways we are now reaping the results.
The Seebohm reorganisation is presenting other problems. An all-purpose social worker responds to pressures. Almost every hon. Member and many other people are guilty of putting pressure on social workers on behalf of the elderly and the handicapped. That is justifiable, but there is a limit on resources, and the application of those pressures means that the time of social workers is taken from young people and given to the handicapped and the elderly. If we press for better facilities for the elderly and handicapped, as we should, we must see that they are not provided at the expense of the children and young persons. This is one of the major problems of having generic workers. We may be able to allocate money to separate areas, but the allocation of the time of all-purpose workers is more difficult. Priority must be given by social workers to carrying out the provisions of the Act.
I have pressed my hon. Friend the Minister many times to give us accurate figures on the extent of the problem in the North-West. In Stockport, the magistrates, social workers and probation service are convinced that there is a major problem. We must have the figures, so that we may assess it. It is unforunate that my hon. Friend has not been able to give us much more information. The best I can discover is the estimate that in the North-West there is under-provision


of assessment and community homes by about 30 per cent.
I understand that in the same area there is also a misuse of facilities. The idea of an assessment centre is that a young person should spend about six weeks there. After being assessed, he should return to his own home or go to an ordinary children's home or a community home. I gather that many children stay in the assessment centre for at least eight weeks, and some stay for 12 weeks or more. Not only are they not being assessed, but they are wasting facilities from which someone else should be benefiting. They stay there because of lack of facilities in community homes or elsewhere to which they should move on. I hope that my hon. Friend can give us accurate figures showing the extent to which we misuse these facilities, particularly in the North-West.
I give one example. The hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) referred to one Stockport case, that of the so-called Artful Dodger, who hit the headlines. A sum of about £7,000 was involved. But there was a much more important case in Stockport a little earlier. About last December a boy appeared before the juvenile magistrates in Stockport for non-attendance at school. The case was deferred, but in January he was placed in the care of the local authority, with the agreement of the magistrates and the social workers that he should go to an assessment centre.
The boy waited until the end of April before, after a great deal of fuss, he was found a place. His punishment for non-attendance at school was to be placed in the care of the local authority, which had to take him home to his mother and tell her, "Don't let him out of your sight. Don't let him go to school until we can find a place for him in an assessment centre." Therefore, his punishment for not going to school was to be kept off school for three months. The boy was not at that stage involved in serious crime. But that incident is a far greater indictment of the present system.
If we are not careful, we can spend the time of the police, social workers and the courts now, and later we may have to spend money on the same people through the prison service. That will cost the community a great deal. It would be

far better to spend the money now on making proper facilities available, particularly in assessment centres and community homes.

5.47 p.m.

Dr. Rhodes Boyson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) for raising the subject of juvenile crime. The experience of most of the previous speakers has been as magistrates or lawyers. My experience of the application of the Children and Young Persons Act has been in the schools and of the effect on school children.
I do not remember the Act going through Parliament. That may be a fault on my part, but I did not at the time expect to enter the House. I was at the receiving end of whatever legislation left here in so far as it affected schools, usually for the worse. But at about the end of 1971, two things began to dawn upon me, or were brought to my notice by housemasters and the police. One was that many boys were being brought in by the police and outsiders to see me about outside offences and there was an increase of truancy about which we seemed unable to do anything.
Because a care and protection order had so often to be obtained before anything could be done, there was often an agreement, illegal or unfair as it may be, between a policeman, a parent and the person against whom the boy had offended for the boy to be brought to school to be dealt with by summary justice, if we were prepared to provide it. That was done because those concerned did not want to go to court or to the social workers.
The House obviously passed the legislation after deep thought, but it has provided the headmasters of many London schools with problems, because nobody else wanted the set-up provided by the Act to deal with the situation that I have described. It showed a lack of confidence in the Act by parents, police, the public, and persons against whom offences had been committed.
Obviously school works only when pupils are at school. It does not have the kind of radar that beams on to triffids from a long distance. If boys are missing from school, they will miss their schooling


and there will be a further increase of illiteracy when they reach the age of 16. Further, they will be doing something different when they are not at school. They will not go to libraries even to sleep. They will not audition for the National Youth Orchestra or wander round art galleries, except in heavy snowstorms. Instead, they will frequent sleazy cafes or wander around flats in gangs, Alternatively, they might decide to see what will fall off the backs of lorries with a little encouragement or visit certain markets in the area.
Reference has been made to the case of the Artful Dodger. If boys of 15—the same may apply to girls—cannot be brought into school because they are in need of care and protection before a trauncy order is effected we shall never be able to keep them in school until 16½, the general school leaving age.
The link between heavy truancy and juvenile delinquency is clear. We were told recently by the Chief Constable of Birmingham that most of the increase in shop-lifting came from boys playing truant from school. The figures for 1973 from Glasgow show that 2,600 boys and girls under the age of 16 were picked up for shoplifting. Over one-third—over 800 —were picked up when they should have been at school. This seems to be a serious weakness in the Children and Young Persons Act. We should be able to deal quickly with truancy by order on the parents when the child is below the age of 15, and by an enforceable fine, or by way of a detention centre or attendance centre, when the child is over 15, when Arsenal is playing at home. In some way we should bring it home to the child that truancy is not permissible.
I believe that the increased rate of truancy is much higher than is thought. This year an analysis took place in the schools. It was done under the Conservative Government in January and the findings appeared in July under the previous administration of the present Government. The findings showed that very few pupils were playing truant. However, the assessment was made on one day, namely, 17th January. All the schools had been warned that there was to be an analysis that day. It was left to the schools to decide in each case whether or not there was truancy. No

school with a good reputation would wish to increase its truancy figure as against absence as a result of genuine illness.
I have letters at home from schoolmasters in areas of the country other than London who say that in their schools they told difficult boys, "You can miss on Wednesday and Friday but on Thursday 17th we want you here." The analysis showed that there was not a great increase in truancy—but, of course, everyone was warned. A similar situation is the air-marshal advising a RAF station that he will be making his inspection on a certain day and the coal being whitewashed.
Last year the Education and Welfare Officers' conference estimated that over 500,000 pupils were playing truant every day. The chairman of that organisation estimated that the figure was 420,000. That was before the raising of the school leaving age. I believe that approximately 650,000 pupils are now playing truant every day. That means that, on average, every child is missing two-thirds of a year of full-time education.
I have now read the Act carefully. I do not like it. I think it is wrong. There was a time during the nineteenth century when most people believed, from a political and religious viewpoint, that illiteracy and misbehaviour were products of original sin, and that the only way of correction was by hitting the rump to stimulate the brain. That was a simple view, and one from which we have moved some way, but there was a degree of truth in it. Perhaps it was rather an extreme view. It now seems that we are faced with an extreme view directed in the opposite direction. There is the Rousseau philosophy that man is born free and is thereafter in chains. Environmentalists and others now put forward the philosophy that boys and girls are born good and that they are ruined by their parents. They suggest that they can be saved only by social workers. That is sometimes a little less true than the nineteenth century belief in original sin.
There are boys who commit offences just for the devilment of it. They do so to see how far they can go. They push against society because they believe that crime pays. There is the idea that by creating a more equal society, by achieving more material wealth or by turning off the television earlier we shall not be


corrupted by the devil. That is a creed which is not on.
There is a mixture between boys who do things for devilment and boys who commit criminal offences in desperation because of home circumstances. The idea that anybody who offends below the age of 15 is in need of care and protection is to me philosophically wrong and disastrous when put into operation.
For example, three boys may commit the same offence. The one who comes from a so-called good home background is sent back to his home. The other two, who come from so-called poorer home backgrounds—the definition of such a background is often very strange, as it is emotional love that matters in the last place—will be said to be in need of care and protection. They see the boy from the good home allowed to return to his home background, and they will no longer believe in British justice. They will believe that there is no such thing as justice, and Professor Mayer says there is no such thing as social justice. From the boy's point of view there can be justice only if everybody is dealt with similarly.
Maybe we have moved too far from the nineteenth century concept to another concept which is not based to a great degree on fact. The very point that people previously went to the courts, whether juvenile courts, magistrates' courts or the High Court, illustrated that certain lines and structures had to be observed. People knew that they could not break the rules, and that a certain pattern of life had to be observed. They realised that their security came from the system. It was not a pathless desert. Social workers are a product of society. The whole effect on boys is different. I am sure that boys prefer the previous system.
It is obvious that I do not like the Act. I did not like what I saw of it fin school. I do not like it now that I have read it. I realise that it was enacted when one Government were in office and that it was implemented by another Government. We must consider seriously the means of quick enforcement of truancy rules to keep boys in school. We must do so by the use of attendance centres for two hours on Saturday afternoons or by imposing fines on parents.

Similarly, a wise probation officer deals with boys not as special social cases but as boys who have misbehaved and are thus normal. Such a probation officer is more likely to do good than someone who treats such boys as semi-social freaks. Of course, many people break the rules. Most boys break them. The House considered speed limits this afternoon. A Minister said that even he had broken them at one time or another.
If there is a possibility of analysing the Act upon the basis that I have outlined I believe that it can be improved. By doing so juvenile delinquency will be reduced and we shall be making a start in the right direction.

5.59 p.m.

Mr. John Watkinson: I agree with much of what I have heard from both sides of the House. There is no doubt that the 1969 Act has been the source of grave disquite among magistrates, police and social workers. But I must warn the House about the danger of over-reacting to the defects which have appeared since the operation of the Act. There is a danger of adopting a mechanistic approach to the problem. There is a danger of viewing the mechanism which we have produced— namely, the Act—and saying "It does not work", thereby condemning all procedures that have been presented to deal with children and young offenders.
I should like to back up what my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) said about the causative factors in juvenile crime and delinquency. In my brief experience working within a Borstal it was rare to find any inmate who did not have some serious social deprivation at home, in his school background or in his relationship with his fellow peers. I will not go through the factors mentioned by my hon. Friend. I support him in what he said.
I mentioned the danger of over-reacting. The Children and Young Persons Act 1969 was the product of several reports during the 1960s—notably the Ingleby and Longford Reports. Those reports pointed out that there was no substantial difference between the delinquent and the deprived child and that in those circumstances there should be no difference of treatment.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) said that the Act had served to blur the distinction. In my view, that was the intention of the Act. The guiding philosophy behind the two reports to which I have referred was that we should substantially reconsider our treatment of delinquent and deprived children and the implications of the stigma of criminal proceedings upon children. They also recommended that we should consider dealing with delinquent children more in the context of the family than of the court.
The net result of the 1969 Act was to preserve the court structure and at the same time to give increased powers to social workers.
The Act, as has been said by hon. Members today, has come in for a good deal of criticism—in certain circumstances warranted criticism—and it must be said that in passing that Act this House failed to provide our social services with adequate means to carry out its provisions. There has been a lack of finance and, indeed, an overwhelming lack of manpower in our social services.
It is worth noting that only 4 per cent. of people working in residential child care have any specialised training of any kind. It is also worth noting that in replacing approved schools no priority has been given to local authorities to provide community homes.
Blame has been put on local authorities in terms of the amounts that they are expending to make the 1969 Act a working reality. The Association of Directors of Social Services, in evidence to the Social Services sub-committee, pointed out that of 55 observation and assessment centres in capital programmes for the year 1974–75, 14 were deferred from a previous year, those 14 being approved, and the other 41 being wiped out by the Department of Health and Social Security. It is important to stress that in the provision of services to make the Act work the Department, in its control over loan sanction, must bear some of the responsibility for the lack of resources.
One of my hon. Friends mentioned that the Seebohm Report, which coincided with the implementtion of the Children and Young Persons Act, and the reorganisation of the social services acted to the

detriment of child welfare, because we now had the principle of the team worker as opposed to the specialised worker.
The implementation of regional planning boards has also provided a source of frustration to senior social workers, because they have lost a certain amount of control over planning resources.
Therefore, there has been a severe lack of provision of resources in terms of both capital programmes and manpower.
We have heard criticism of the procedure under which care orders can be made. It is said that children placed in care are later found on the streets. It is to be noted that it was open to the managers of approved schools to release children in their care. Therefore, under the old system, children who had been sent to approved schools could be found on the streets.
From the arguments that have been presented I do not know whether hon. Members want the approved school system to be reintroduced. Therefore, some of the defects of that system ought to be underlined. Approved schools were isolated institutions set in rural backgrounds far from the urban settings where children have to learn to live if they are to come to terms with society. They were institutions from which there was endless absconding. Indeed, their success rate was no greater than 43 per cent. I suggest that a return to the approved school system should not recommend itself to this House.
Magistrates are at present using their powers to send young offenders to detention centres because they feel unable to guarantee that those children will be taken into care. That is obviously not the intention of the Act. Indeed, magistrates should not allow themselves to make such orders because they are breaches of accepted sentencing policy.
Hon. Gentlemen opposite have said that there is provision within the working of the Act for children of unruly character who cannot be committed to the care of local authorities to be committed to remand centres or to prison. We have heard details about children in such circumstances. This practice should be stopped forthwith. The whole philosophy behind the Act was, as far as possible, to keep children out of such institutions.


The same principle should apply to offenders awaiting sentence for Borstal in a Crown court. They frequently find themselves awaiting sentence in prison. This practice should be brought to an end.
I have said that the Act can be criticised. Certainly something needs to be done. Principally, we need greater expenditure on the resources available to local authorities. We should not be panicked into concluding that the Act has completely failed in its purpose—that would be a dangerous thing to do—but we should consider some serious studies into the effects of taking children away from their homes and holding them in secure places compared with the performance of children who are not taken away from their homes. There have been very few studies in this country to compare the success or failure of these two groups, but studies in America indicate that there is little difference in future performance between those who have been taken away from home and those who have remained at home. I should like to see some such study of that aspect of the matter.
I, too, would accept, and I think that everyone would—the police, magistrates and social workers—that there is a need for places where young offenders may be held in secure confinement. There are some whose offences are of such a nature and spanning over such a period that it is necessary that there should be secure provision for them.
It is necessary to reconsider the operation of the Act, but it is inappropriate at this time to consider jettisoning it. It can be made to work, but, as with so many other things, what is required is more expenditure.

6.11 p.m.

Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: The House appears to be remarkably united this afternoon in its disquiet about the disturbing increase in juvenile crime, particularly in the big conurbations, and remarkably concerned about the workings of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969. There seems to be broad agreement, too, about the way forward. We want a departmental committee, or perhaps a House of Commons Select Committee, but preferably the former, to do three basic jobs: to study the working of

the Act, to monitor its progress, and to recommend changes in the law. As has been said over and over again this afternoon, the Government must make increased financial provision so that the Act may be properly implemented and given a fair trial.
What has been going wrong? Again there is broad agreement about that. The implementation of the Act has been too slow. Community homes were not established until April 1973, and I am told that the first intermediate centre did not open until July 1973. According to a Written Answer as recently as 20th November, certain sections of the Act still require implementation.
Unfortunately, the Act gave added responsibilities to local authorities at the time of local government reorganisation. More important, the absence of adequate accommodation—and, in conjunction with my colleagues, let me mention particularly secure accommodation—has been one of the main problems. There appears to be an absence of any system for appraising and improving the provision of accommodation, and I hope that the Minister will say something about that.
Too many children in the big conurbations have been encouraged by the default of our services into the pattern of deprivation that leads to crime, and I speak as a council member of a charity that deals with seriously disturbed and homeless adolescents. We have had graphic descriptions this afternoon of this crazy cycle—children being put into the care of local authorities, which means social workers, which means all too often that they are returned to the home where the trouble started in the first place.
We have also heard mention of the number of these children who are in adult prisons. Surely that makes a mockery of the basic intentions of the Act. Properly staffed accommodation is frighteningly expensive, but surely we can see that society will have to pay tomorrow if it is not prepared to face up to its responsibilities today. Certainly we cannot consider the explosion—and a remarkable explosion it is—in juvenile crime without appreciating its connection with the high rate of truancy in too many of our schools. As we know, many children are absconding from school when the crime takes place.
The House has been told of the low morale among magistrates and social workers. I should like to stress the need to restore power to the juvenile court magistrates in order to prevent further resignations. We are faced with a dangereous position as a result of these resignations. Too many children feel that they have got away with it, and that is extremely dangerous. The distinction between right and wrong has become too blurred. Let us give magistrates the widest possible discretion and the power to impose sanctions for criminal behaviour.
I can briefly sum up my views by quoting The Magistrate of November 1974. It said:
The 1969 Act, with its greater emphasis on care than on punishment, is appropriate and has worked reasonably well with the majority of children and young people who come before the courts or, better still, no longer have to come before the courts. Nevertheless … there remain, especially in the big cities, a small minority of tough sophisticated juvenile offenders—and some 15- and 16-year olds are strong young men for whom these provisions are totally inadequate. They deride the powerlessness of the courts to deal with them, commit further offences after having been placed in the care of the local authority, and are led to think that they can break the law with impunity. Some kind of ' long stop' measure is needed so that young offenders who do not respond to constructive treatment (which we support) are shown that in the last resort the law has teeth. Failure to show them this serves only to encourage a small minority to grow into adult criminals.
I strongly support those views and I hope that the Government will take note of the strong and surprisingly united feeling in the House this afternoon.

6.16 p.m.

Mr. Edward Gardner: I join with other hon. Members in most warmly congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) on his speech. I congratulate him not only on the way in which he has presented his arguments but on the force and clarity with which he made clear the need for Government action—urgent Government action—to deal with juvenile crime.
It is a sad and startling fact, which I think is recognised on both sides of the House and certainly by the public outside, that we are suffering from an uncontrolled and, in the present state of the law,

apparently uncontrollable surge of violence and crime by children under the age of 17. It is almost unbelievable that the most persistent and violent of our criminals—at least, some of them—are children under the age of 17.
The figures that my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst has pointed out are frightening and serious. Nearly one-quarter of our serious crimes and more than 40 per cent. of all burglaries and robberies are committed by children under the age of 17. Anyone who has tried to deal with this problem must in some way be affected by the depair and frustration felt by those who are doing their best to solve the problem.
In a recent speech, the Lord Chancellor mentioned the fact that there were defects in the 1969 Act and in the facilities provided for implementing it. Magistrates throughout the country—I have had letters recently from associations to point out just how many magistrates are involved—have been threatening to resign, and a number of them have already resigned, because of the intense feeling that they are unable to cope with the problem either with the aid of the law or, if the law is suitable, because there is inadequate provision of facilities, such as proper accommodation.
This feeling of frustration is shared by all who come into contact with this problem—not only the magistrates but the police, probation officers and social workers who, as I believe we would all wish it to be recognised, have been doing an outstanding job in attempting to bring some sense into the problem.
The blame for what is happening lies with, though it may not be equally shared by, the law itself—that is, the Children and Young Persons Act 1969—and the absence of adequate facilities to enable the intentions of the Act to be fulfilled. I do not doubt—I suppose there are few Members in the House who would doubt —that the intentions that lay behind— and still lie behind—the 1969 Act were good. There was the intention that children should be treated rather than punished. It was the intention of the Act that responsibility for the treatment should be transferred from the courts to social workers. Let it be said that in many cases this works, but let it also be recognised that there remains a small


but growing persistent core of offenders for whom the provisions of the Act have no meaning and to whom they give no hope. The Act has failed to discourage them. Indeed, it appears positively to have encouraged them and to have increased their numbers.
Under the Act, magistrates on juvenile panels no longer have any power to discipline children or to impose disciplines on children who come before the courts. Time and again magistrates have before them children who are able and determined to mock the law and break it. They commit crimes with virtual impunity, and ultimately they become what Mr. William Deedes, the former right hon. Member for Ashford, once described as "apprentices in crime". Of course, the magistrates can fine these children, but what is the use of fining a child when no money is available for the payment of the fine and no powers are readily available to enforce it? A compensation order may be made, but the same objection applies.
Before the Act was passed magistrates could say to local authorities, "We require you to take in this child and provide suitable accommodation for him —if need be, secure accommodation". Whether there was such accommodation is another matter; the fact remains that under the 1969 Act all that magistrates can do is to put the child in the care of the local authority, and it is then for the social workers to try to find suitable accommodation. In many cases there is no such suitable accommodation, and where there is, for example, a community home, the warden of the home has the ability to say, "No. I shall not take that child because it is too difficult".
The other week I had a talk with a social worker who had to deal with a very difficult young girl. She had committed offence after offence and he could do nothing with her. She needed special treatment and secure accommodation, so he went to a community home and asked the warden whether she could be accommodated there. The warden replied, "If she is a girl of fairly good character, well behaved, intelligent and likely to be cooperative, we will do what we can for her". As the social worker said, "If I had been trying to get the girl into Roedean with those qualifications I might have succeeded". The fact that

the girl was difficult was sufficient for the warden to say, "No. We will not have her in this home".
As my hon. Friends the Members for Chislehurst, and Brent, North (Dr. Boyson) said, there is no doubt that truancy is an important element in juvenile crime. Between 70 per cent. and 80 per cent. of the children who get into trouble are those who have been absenting themselves from school. I ask the Minister to bear in mind what I know he will understand to be one of the prime difficulties of the 1969 Act, namely, the evidenciary problem. To deal effectively with truancy it has to be proved not only that the child has been absent from school but that he is in need of care. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst said, if a child is playing truant from school, that itself ought to be sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the child is probably in need of care.
There are two solutions to the problem. The first is the obvious one of providing more facilities. We ought to overcome the shortage of community homes and the shortage of facilities for such institutions as special schools and places where special medical help can be given to these children. I am told that the Minister has received from the Justices' Clerks' Society a copy of the memorandum on the working of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969. If he has, he will find in there that the absence of a sufficient number of special schools and special medical help are described as "a national disgrace", and indeed they are.
In a recent debate in the House my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe) complained—I join him strongly in this complaint—that there is no system for the appraising and improving of accommodation facilities. What I am anxious about in this debate, as I know my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst will be, is to ensure that the Government, through the Home Secretary—whose responsibility it is—do something immediately, in advance of the ultimate reform of the 1969 Act. On that there would appear to be remarkable unanimity on both sides of the House and in the country.
I have received a letter from Mrs. K. M. Fox, the President of the National Council of Women of Great


Britain, in which she talks about the urgent need for the Act to be re-examined and altered in order to help the disturbing number of children who are still seriously at risk. In October 1973 her council passed a resolution asking the Government to re-examine and re-assess the workings of the 1969 Act. In July this year—I hope that this fact has been brought to the Minister's attention—the council prepared a memorandum on the workings of the 1969 Act. It is an imposing document, containing some very cogent and compelling arguments. I do not wish to weary the House by referring to the memorandum in detail. I merely put it before the House as evidence, if evidence be required, of the unanimity in the country among those who have had dealings with the Act of the need to take urgent steps to ensure that the Act is reviewed.
The memorandum which the Justices' Clerks' Society has produced describes the Act, in words which I adopt, as a
singularly inept piece of legislation
and says that among the reasons for the Act's failure is the failure of the care order to deal with the hard core of persistent offenders. It also points out that the Act has deprived society, through the courts, of the important power of protecting the public.
In August this year a committee of the Society of Conservative Lawyers produced a report called, "Apprentices on Crime"—I know that the Minister has had a copy of it—which was the result of two years' work in taking evidence and trying to discover how best the Act could be amended for its improvement. The work of the committee showed how difficult it is to make good and sensible suggestions, but I hope that some of the suggestions in the report will commend themselves to the Minister. The Conservative Party, in its election manifesto adopting the recommendations of the Society of Conservative Lawyers, promised to review and amend the Act if it returned to power.
I want specifically to mention a motion put on the Order Paper by the hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett), which has become an all-party motion. It complains about the frustration being felt by magistrates and the lack of facili-

ties available to implement the 1969 Act, and it asks the Government to set up a Select Committee to study the workings of the Act.
The Children and Young Persons Act 1933 set out in statutory form the principle which I believe the House would wish to be followed in any amendment which we might make to the 1969 Act. The 1933 Act provided that
a court shall have regard to the welfare of the child or young person".
We would all endorse that. But we must also have in mind—I think that the House is equally concerned about this—the need to protect the public against the hard core of persistent offenders and, further, to protect those offenders against themselves.
We must, by fresh legislation, do something positive to remove the deficiencies and anomalies of the 1969 Act. It is essential for us to restore to the courts some of the powers which were taken away by that Act. I join those hon. Members who have asked the Minister to consider setting up a departmental committee so that the workings of the Act and its future may be urgently considered. When we had to deal with the future of the jury system—goodness knows, that was a pretty complex matter —in 1962 a departmental committee was set up by the Home Secretary under the chairmanship of Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest. Its recommendations were ultimately accepted and implemented.
The question of legislation governing the control of juveniles and juvenile crime presents a complex problem, which we should consider with the greatest possible care. Would it not be of the greatest help for the future and possibly for the present if a similar departmental inquiry were to be set up under the chairmanship of the distinguished Lord of Appeal in Ordinary—if that be the kind of candidate we want—with the committee being composed of social workers, magistrates, probation officers and others with direct experience of the failures of the 1969 Act? Through such a committee the Government would have a guide of some certainty and wisdom, which could lead us out of what is, under existing legislation, an almost insoluble problem.

6.38 p.m.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon): The House


owes a great debt of gratitude to the hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) for enabling us to ventilate a subject which is causing deep concern in the country and, judging from the many contributions made in the debate, deep concern in the House. I owe a debt of gratitude to the hon. Member for the way in which he introduced the motion. He made a measured and constructive speech, and we shall pay great attention to the points he made.
The source of the concern is obvious to all. Children are increasingly involved in the commission of criminal offences. In 1969, 72,000 children under the age of 17 were dealt with for indictable offences. By 1973, the figure had risen to 79,000. However, if one adds the considerable number of children who were cautioned rather than proceeded against, one finds that the figure rose from 165,000 in 1969 to 205,000 in 1973.
In addition, there are signs that the degree of seriousness of offences committed by children is increasing. The peak age of criminality is falling. It seems to be 15 for boys and 14 for girls.
In directing attention towards juvenile crime, the facts should not be overstrained. The figures for juvenile crime reflect the increase in crime generally. In 1970, 23·7 per cent. of indictable offences by males were committed by children under 17. In 1973 the figure had risen only to 24·6 per cent. The rise overall does not suggest that what is happening to children is markedly out of line with what is happening to the community generally. I do not minimise the importance of the serious crime wave that we are experiencing, but it is part of the pattern.
In looking at that position, the real question is whether we are any worse off because of the working of the 1969 Act, or whether that Act now needs no further consideration. The Home Secretary and I share the deep concern that has been expressed in the House. As the Home Secretary said to the Police Federation in October, we are perfectly willing to look at any defects, whether of concept or of execution, which it is thought can practically be dealt with in relation to the Act.
The 1968 White Paper "Children in Trouble", on which the Act was based said that

 the aims of protecting society from juvenile delinquency, and of helping children in trouble to grow up into mature and law-abiding persons are complementary and not contradictory.
The 1969 Act sought to enshrine that philosophy in law. Its aims are to spare young offenders the stigma of criminality by dealing with them as far as possible outside the criminal law; to support and treat them in their families and in the community to which, whatever form of residential custodial treatment is available, they must eventually return; and to ensure that when a child or young person has to come before the juvenile court he is dealt with in the light of his individual needs, and that there is a wide variety of treatment measures available to help him. In considering the question we should ask ourselves whether that aim has been realised by the Act and, if we find the present position inadequate, whether it is capable of being realised.
In quoting figures of serious crimes committed by young people, the hon. Member for Chislehurst drew largely on the recent speech of Commander Peter Marshall, of the Metropolitan Police. In view of what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) said about the police, it is interesting to note that in his speech Commander Marshall said:
It is fashionable to criticise the Children and Young Persons Act of 1969 and to lay at its door the failures of today. In my view this is unfair. There was no golden age pre-1969 when acts of punishment worked wonders with juvenile delinquents. We are seeing the inevitable development of a trend towards more juvenile crime which has its origin in the nature of urban industrial society.
There is a great deal of wisdom in that comment, which we have to bear in mind in considering criticisms of the working of the Act.
The Act has been in operation for less than four years. There are 11 different orders which juvenile courts can make in relation to children who have been charged with offences, ranging from binding over to a recommendation to the Crown court for an order for borstal training. They include detention centre orders as custodial treatment for children and attendance centres.
The major change in the Act, and the one on which most attention is focused,


is the wider use of the care order. It was always possible for a juvenile court to make an order that a child should be put in the care of a local authority, but the Act recommended that it should be done, too, in relation to a criminal offence. It took away the power of the magistrate specifically to send a child to an approved school or to make a fit person order. It is there that magistrates have expressed resentment and frustration. But it should not be thought that the effect of that change means—as some hon. Members seem to presume—that when the magistrates make a care order the child must always be dealt with in a home. That is not so. The purpose of making the care order is to introduce a wider area of flexibility in the treatment of the child. Treatment is not to be rigidly limited to custody in an approved school.
When a care order is made the local authority has three choices before it. First, it can decide to advise and support the child in the home, which is what most people understand by the care order. Secondly, it can link that with the exercise of some discretion over the child's spare time activities by adding some non-residential treatment. Thirdly, it can remove the child from the home altogether and put him into what the Act calls a community home, but that includes all the approved schools and remand homes that were in existence before the Act came into force in 1971. It is true that the community home schemes put forward by the 12 regional planning committees came into force only 20 months ago, but they include all the buildings that were previously used as approved schools or remand homes.
The hon. Member for Chislehurst said that before the introduction of the Act a magistrates' court could tell a home, "You will take this child"—but it could not. What it could do was to make an order. Then it was for the court to get in touch with the Home Office and for the Home Office to telephone round to see whether a place was available. The reason why it was not possible to make an order for an approved school to take the child was that most approved schools were voluntary schools, which were not under the local authority, and the schools were entitled to take whom they liked.

Mr. Edward Gardner: Is not one of the prime causes of the frustration of magistrates the fact that although social workers do not choose to send children back to their homes they have to because of the lack of places in community homes?

Mr. Lyon: I am coming to that point. The hon. and learned Gentleman has focused his criticism where it should lie.
The places available in what are now called special community homes, but which were formerly called remand homes or approved schools, are substantially in use. There is a very slight drop on the number of places which were available in 1969, but all are in use. The question arises whether there should be more places, so as to allow the local authority social services department to do its proper job of selecting the best treatment that is available to help the child.
What we need are more resources to provide more homes and, in particular, more secure homes, for the smaller but increasingly important number of children who are very delinquent and far beyond the capacity of the ordinary community home to deal with.

Mr. John Loveridge: Will the Minister consider the rather different aspect of safeguarding the children? The child of one of my constituents was brought before the court and imprisoned for the misdemeanour of truancy. Should it be possible under the Act for a child to be locked up for a crime for which an adult cannot be locked up?

Mr. Lyon: Concern has been expressed about truancy and treatment. My hon. Friend says that the powers of the court are not entirely taken away in regard to treatment for truancy. Since 1971 the number of orders made on the grounds of truancy have steadily increased from 1,300 to 2,098 in the last year for which figures are available.
Amidst all the criticisms of the Act— criticisms which I understand and to which I am sensitive—one must return to the recognition of the fact that the real failure of the Act is that there are not sufficient facilities available to make the legislation effective in terms of the increasing number of children, and particularly for those who are grossly disturbed in relation to whom the Act has


certain powers but where those powers have not been translated into buildings. In the time that remains for this debate I should like to indicate what has been done, and what is proposed to be done, about the increase in resources to allow the Act to operate more effectively.
Among the boys and girls committed to the care of local authorities a tiny minority are so disturbed and disruptive that in community homes corresponding to the former approved schools, even in those with secure units, they not only receive no benefit themselves but severely obstruct the treatment of others. For such children, under new powers conferred by Section 64 of the Act the Department of Health and Social Security is to provide and administer directly three establishments with a high staff ratio, specialised facilities and programmes geared to a stay of as long as four years. One of these youth treatment centres is already in operation with about 30 children and with an eventual capacity of about 55.
The regional plans, decided by 12 statutory regional planning committees, provide for the construction of 550 further community homes, with 8,750 places—a 15 per cent. increase on the present allocation. A total of 3,100 of these places are to be in "special" community homes, which are equivalent to the old more secure type of home, such as the remand home or approved school. A total of 460 of these places are to be in secure units which will have an even more restricted regime than did the old approved schools. These plans all depend on the allocation of resources to fulfil them.
Two new youth treatment centres are to be built with 196 places, of which 98 are to be in secure units. Construction of the first unit, at Birmingham, is planned to begin in the summer of 1975 and the second, at Wakefield, will begin in the following year. The units are to be purpose-built and will, together with the existing centre at Brentwood in Essex, constitute a resource available for England and Wales as a whole.
What do we intend to do about providing the resources? Local authority capital expenditure on community homes is financed mainly by borrowing. Community homes are part of the personal social services and accordingly are sub-

ject to what is known as the "key sector" loan sanction procedure. In other words, the Secretary of State's approval is required for each project.
Regional plans for community homes were approved by the Secretary of State for Social Services to come into operation on 1st April 1973. In England, in anticipation of the approval of regional plans, approval was given in the previous financial year to projects which would provide 365 of the additional places included in those plans. The House will remember that last year the Conservative Government made considerable public expenditure cuts. One effect of those cuts was that the programme was never fully implemented. This is one reason why the Act has not been as effective as it should have been. In the event, in that year approval was given to 121 community home building projects—only one-third of the expected number—and these projects covered, among other things, 743 additional places.
In 1974–75 the reductions in previously planned capital investment had the result that the list of provisionally approved projects issued by the Department to local authorities at the beginning of the year had to be limited to projects which had been provisionally approved in the previous year but which had not reached final approval. However, the original allocation of capital for community home building in England in 1974–75, namely £6·9 million, has been increased as part of the Chancellor's decision to help the construction industry. Approvals in 1974-75 are now estimated to total £9·25 million covering 227 projects which will among other things produce 1,109 new places.
For the next financial year the Secretary of State for Social Services has issued a circular to local authorities asking for their bids and indicating that they should put all the building projects into orders of priority to show what they consider to be the most relevant expenditure projects in their areas. From the information we already have available—and the bids are not finally in—it is becoming clear that local authorities regard the provision of community homes, and particularly secure community homes, as being at the top of their order of priority.

Mr. Alec Woodall: It is all very well to announce plans for


increased buildings and extra facilities, but what use are they if we do not have the money to pay extra staff and to train social workers?

Mr. Lyon: My hon. Friend raises a valid matter and I do not minimise it. The Secretary of State for Social Services has taken that subject into consideration in his assessment of the amounts of money which can be devoted to local authority expenditure in the coming year. The upshot of all this planning is that we anticipate there will be a considerable increase in the amount of resources to be made available to local authority social services to implement the Act.
I wanted to go on to show where we accept criticism of the provisions of the Act and the respects in which we think criticisms are misplaced. However, in the remaining amount of time available to me, the best I can do is tell the House that the Act and its effects are under review in the Department. We are co-operating with the Secretary of State for Social Services in implementing its results. The hon. Member for Chiselhurst (Mr. Sims) can be assured that all his criticisms and those of other hon. Members will be taken into consideration in that review. I hope that he will take the view that the substance of his motion is accepted and will feel able to withdraw it.

6.59 p.m.

Mr. Sims: The Minister has given the House some interesting and encouraging news in the last few minutes. I am disappointed that he does not feel able to accept the motion, but I hope that I initiated the debate in a constructive spirit. The debate has been conducted in an instructive and useful atmosphere, and I think the House will agree that our time has been well spent.
We shall carefully watch the review which the Minister has announced, and I hope that we shall be given its results at an early date. I trust that in that review the Minister will be able to meet some of the criticisms which have been so deeply felt by hon. Members. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

POLICE

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. John Ellis.]

7.0 p.m.

Sir Keith Joseph: There is no regular occasion in the House to debate the affairs of the police in the way that there is in relation to the Armed Forces, yet the protection of freedom in our society under the rule of law ranks with defence as the prime duty of Government. Today, therefore, we have chosen the subject of the shortage of police as a topic for debate in the hope that the Home Secretary will welcome the opportunity to tell us what progress the Government have made and expect to make in making good the very serious shortfall that there is in the police force.
We ask much of the police. Police duties and responsibilities in this age of rapid social and economic transition are very much more demanding and complicated than ever they used to be. We expect them to maintain law and order with scrupulous care for the liberty of the subject. We expect them to cope with soaring rates of crime, especially violent crime and juvenile crime, and with constantly increasing traffic and large numbers of demonstrations, especially in London. We expect the police to win the confidence of immigrant groups and to protect the country from terrorism.
Considering the burden that is upon the police and the shortages of manpower, the police continually earn our respect and gratitude for the work that they do. I wish to start my speech by paying a tribute to their remarkably high performance. They are asked to do work calling for a high order of judgment, initiative and discipline, often in the face of great and deliberate provocation. Without their dedication society would be in danger of falling apart. The least we can do for them is to ensure that they have the manpower and the backing to tackle their task with less pressure than that which is upon them today. They are under pressure. Crime is, alas, still rising fast.
We have had a recent announcement from the Home Office comparing the crime figures for the first half of this year


with the equivalent figures for the first half of last year. Overall, the crime rate, for offences recorded as known to the police in England and Wales, has risen by 20 per cent. The burglary rate has risen by 22 per cent., which is a fairly sharp contrast with last year's experience, when there had been a fall of 11 per cent. between the first halves of 1972 and 1973. The rate of theft and the handling of stolen goods has risen by 23 per cent. The criminal damage rate—which I imagine is largely vandalism—has risen by 28 per cent. There has been, as I said, an overall increase of 20 per cent., and a much larger increase in the rate of juvenile crime—a distressing feature which ties up with the subject of the previous debate.
Not only has the incidence of crime been continuing to rise fast but, of course, terrorism has made new incursions in our land. The House gave a welcome to the Home Secretary's Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act last week, when I think that we all recognised that the burden of carrying into effect the provisions of that Act will impose extra duties upon the police.
To face this aggregate of very difficult tasks, the police, alas, are still heavily undermanned. The latest figures that we have are the figures at the end of 1973, in which out of 45 police authorities no fewer than 16 had shortages greater than 10 per cent. of their establishment, and two of those 16, the Metropolitan Police and the West Midlands Police, had shortages of over 20 per cent. of their establishment. The Metropolitan Police are handling 20 times more crime than they were in 1921—and a large increase in violent crime—with 800 fewer men than they had in 1921.
I have to say at once that the number of civilians employed by the police force has risen dramatically to supplement and to complement the work of the police, and we must not forget that this has increased effectively the performance of the individual police officer. But when one considers that a quarter of the crime in this country takes place in the metropolitan area, and that in that area are found the embassies and the great mass of the demonstrations, as well as huge volumes of traffic, one realises that it is extraordinary that the police should be even asked to tackle that mountain of

work, even with civilian help, with 800 fewer staff than they had in 1921. It is, therefore, all the more creditable that the police have managed, by increased operational efficiency, to offset some of the effects of undermanning.
We know that our police are much admired abroad and at home. Earlier this year a poll of public opinion was taken in this country. People were asked which institutions they held in the highest respect. That poll showed that top of the list came the police force, admired by 70 per cent. of those who answered—a far, far higher proportion of the population, alas, than that which had admiration for our work in this House.
The police are demonstrating mounting skills in detecting the crimes on which they focus. I referred a little earlier to their success in the period between the first half of 1972 and the first half of 1973 in turning down the volume of robbery on which they concentrated in 1973. I think that I may have given the House a wrong figure earlier. There has been a rise in robbery of 7 per cent. in the first six months of this year, compared with the figure for the first six months of last year. That rise compares with a fall of 19 per cent. between the first half of 1972 and the first half of 1973. That fall in 1972–73 coincided with the attempt by the police to focus particularly on robbery, which attempt seemed then to be very successful.
The police record is not perfect. There are occasionally justified complaints, or worse. We know that the vast majority of complaints have been disproved. We know that the Home Secretary is negotiating with the police a more sophisticated complaints machinery. I should like to hear about the present position on that matter from the Home Secretary.
In brief, however, the police seem to be better organised, more effective, more accountable and more respected than ever before in our history, at a time when they have probably more to do than ever before. If they can achieve this relatively well despite severe undermanning, the country and the House will ask why should they not do much better still if only they were fully manned. That is the question we put to the Government.
The present position is that the cost of keeping any control at all over the more


serious crimes is that scant attention is paid to crimes which in normal times would be called serious but which are all too often now regarded as relatively minor. For instance, burglaries, of which there are enormous numbers of examples every year, can now claim very little police time. There are far too few men available for preventive patrolling, and the detective force carries a huge case load. There is a great deal more to be done on the preventive side which the police are either at present not asked to do or do not have the manpower to carry out.
This is not a debate about the roots of crime, but we all know that there are preventive and prophylactic policies which we should be asking the police to help the authorities concerned to put into effect, and which might reduce the crime rate in future. Only last week the National Association for the Care and Rehabilitation of Offenders—NACRO— invited Dr. Oscar Newman to this country to give a talk on "Defensible Space". It seems now to be commonly agreed that the briefs that we give to architects for many of our building schemes are almost designed to encourage crime and alienation. I have the sad feeling, as one who was many years ago a Minister of Housing, that the social mistakes of the past in our housing estates are reproduced now on thousands of drawing boards all over the country, and that we could repeat the mistakes in the future simply because we have not drawn on the lessons that the police, in conjunction with social workers and voluntary bodies, could teach us for our guidance in future design.
If we want the police to carry out a constructive social function for the community, in which they would provide constructive links with social workers in order to ease social stress, we must give them the manpower to carry out both their prime job and other important work. I need hardly tell any hon. Member that there is great public concern about crime. No subject features more often in hon Members' postbags than worry among constituents about crime, particularly violent crime.
We recognise, in approaching this debate, that in the present state of the economy public expenditure must not be increased. Indeed, the Opposition would

say that public expenditure should be decreased. If, therefore from this Box I urge on the Home Secretary that expenditure considerations should not constrain police recruitment, I would couple that with the fact that during the past two General Elections the Opposition urged that public expenditure should be restrained, if necessary more in some areas than in others, so as to allow for extra expenditure in four or five main areas. During both General Elections we urged that those special areas should include the police. Therefore, I can with an easy conscience press on the Home Secretary, if necessary, the need to increase public expenditure on the police service.
We ask the Government to give top priority to increasing police manpower. I believe that the Home Secretary will be able to confirm that he is not restrained in this respect by Treasury injunctions. An answer to a question during recent Select Committee proceedings encourages me to believe that that is so.
We believe that the police are now able, given the manpower, to turn the tide of crime back. But at the moment there is a vicious circle. The combined level of pay and working conditions is not enough to attract sufficient men of quality. Therefore, those now in the service have to work longer hours and undergo unsatisfactory conditions, and so they quit, thus making the task of those who remain even harder.
I turn to the shortage and the cure. Everything that I say from now is subject to the qualification that we would expect the Government and the police authorities to maintain quality. Pay, which has just been increased, is a vital factor, but not the only factor that the police have to face. The biggest factor is wastage, which I am sure stems mainly from a dissatisfaction with working conditions. The job satisfaction of a policeman is potentially high but now is often soured by the irregularity and length of hours, by shift and weekend working, and by cancellation of leave. All these maters affect home life. We read with sympathy and dismay that in the Metropolitan Police, a police officer can expect to get off only one weekend in every eight. In such circumstances the strain on home life must be very considerable.
As the Home Secretary is aware, the pre-war policeman expected and got far better conditions and pay than the average industrial worker. Now, when the need for policemen is desperate, both pay and working conditions are far worse than those of the average industrial worker. We urge the Home Secretary to take every possible step to increase the number of policemen, while maintaining the quality.
What can we suggest? Our suggestions will all be familiar and so I shall not spend long dealing with them. The Home Secretary should review pension arrangements and, because shortage is worse in big cities, he should consider a big-city allowance, if that is the only way to make good the shortage. He should also look at the career structure. Does it make sense that when young people leave school at 18 they find that they cannot be recruited into the police until aged 19? That point should be considered.
There should also be more reward for long service. We recognise the value of a policeman who stays in a community, knows it and takes a part in it. Such a policeman should be rewarded for his length of experience. There should also be more opportunities for promotion. We hope that an increase in the numbers of policemen would enable the Home Secretary to remove some of the sore points from present working conditions. We also ask whether housing allowances are effective, and we wonder whether there is further scope to civilianise more of the jobs in the police service.
We ask the Home Secretary how his working party is progressing in relation to special constables. We realise that the police forces have mixed feelings about special constables, and all hon. Members will appreciate that special constables cannot do the main job of the police. But they can back up the police and relieve them of more mundane tasks. We hope that the Home Secretary will give some information on this point.
All these proposals have implications for public expenditure, but I put finally a proposition to the Home Secretary. The British taxpayer has to pay a large amount in taxes. He has to pay taxes for many things of which he disapproves. We could each make a little, or perhaps a long, list of those taxes which the British taxpayer pays with the greatest distaste.

But there is I believe one element of the tax system which the taxpayer would pay readily—those taxes to increase the strength and effectiveness of the police forces. That is the sort of taxation which the British taxpayer thoroughly understands. If it were to produce less crime, and more effective and more fully manned police forces, the British taxpayer would be willing to pay the part of his taxes that would go to that end.
The Home Secretary has much credit to gain with the public if he succeeds in reducing the under-manning. I say this with diffidence and caution, but one of the few comforting by products of any recession that may be emerging is that undermanned public services as a whole—I do not pick out only the police, but also, for instance, transport and health services —may be able to recruit manpower of talent and quality that, especially in the case of the police, is greatly needed.
We wish the Home Secretary well if he is to undertake this task. We hope that he will succeed and that he will this evening give the country, and us, some good news of his progress and of his intentions.

7.18 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Roy Jenkins): The right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) concluded his speech by wishing me well, and therefore it would be churlish and would not accord with anything that he said or anything that I desire to say if I were to engage in controversy on this occasion. I welcome the debate. It is desirable that we should discuss the police, and problems of recruitment and police strength, in general terms rather than in relation to a specific occasion. The analogy which the right hon. Gentleman drew, of saying that we automatically discuss the Armed Forces—some people think, by our traditions in the House, on almost too many occasions a year—but hardly ever discuss the police, except when a particular issue arises, makes it desirable that this topic should have been chosen on this occasion.
We hold the debate against the background of a terrorist threat almost without precedent in this country. It is a threat which we have debated at length recently and one aspect of which we shall debate again on Wednesday. Therefore, I shall not say any more about it on this


occasion—at least not anything significantly more.
We also hold the debate against the background of rising crime figures which, unfortunately, have been a feature of our society for a considerable time past. The right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East knows well the statistical history of this matter, which was that after a fairly long period of a depressing rise, we suddenly had what I fear proved to be a "false dawn" in the latter part of 1972 and the early part of 1973. Curiously, it appears in the statistics as though it were a 1973 phenomenon but in fact it began in the latter part of 1972 and reversed itself in about the middle of 1973. The trend had already turned the wrong way almost by the last six months of 1973. I think it would be difficult to draw any conclusions from this, except that the remission, immensely welcome in itself, did not seem to have any long-term consequences.
The right hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the substantial increases in many categories of crime during 1974, provided that he recognises that this began in 1973—as he does—and is also right to draw attention to the fact that perhaps the most disturbing feature is the increase in juvenile crime, a subject which was debated earlier today, to some extent.
If one is looking, as one must, for some slight sign of alleviation, it is that the increase in violent crime has not been nearly as great as the increase in crime in general. However, I do not believe that we should draw too much comfort from this, for what we want is not just a slowing down in the rate of increase but a reduction in the amount of violent crime. The increases which have come forward have not been reflected in the same rate of increase in that form of crime, namely, violent crime, which, although all crime disturbs us, disturbs us most of all.
The broad questions about the rule of law which have so recently and so vividly faced us all more than justify our applying ourselves to a wide spectrum of police affairs tonight. The right hon. Gentleman dealt with these wider issues, although focusing upon the question of police recruitment. I want to follow much the same pattern in my reply and

to try to pick up at any rate a fair proportion of the right hon. Gentleman's points. If I let some of them slip I am sure that my hon. Friend the Undersecretary will deal with the others when she concludes the debate.
It is right that we remember that the tasks that the police have to carry out are not only vital to the whole fabric of civilised society; they are tasks which Parliament has specifically laid upon them by the House under successive Governments. The responsibilities of the police have always been heavy and have become significantly more so as a result of recent developments, to which the right hon. Gentleman rightly drew attention and which are readily present to the mind of every hon. Member.
The police have responded readily and effectively to the additional demands placed upon them by the Prevention of Terrorism Act which the House carried through a little over 10 days ago—in particular, the travel controls. Ever since the beginning of the wave of terrorism in Great Britain in March 1973 —alas, it had existed in Northern Ireland before—the police have maintained a high level of surveillance at seaports and airports dealing with the Irish traffic and a still higher level of surveillance is now being exercised following the new legislation.
Few people will doubt the value of the efforts which the police are devoting to counter-terrorist operations. Successive Governments have devoted the highest priority to supporting the police in this vital aspect of their activity.
I do not think that at this time we should forget or ignore the fact that there have been some notable police achievements in this field in the last week or so. It is important, from the point of view of police morale, which is vital to us all at present, that the House should express its appreciation of what has been achieved in this field.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I am very glad that the Home Secretary has paid that well-deserved tribute to the police. Will he couple with it a particular tribute to the Special Branch? I ask this simply because, perhaps more than any other branch, the Special Branch has been, quite wrongly, vilified in many public prints. Of course


the Special Branch makes mistakes, but it, too, is entitled to credit.

Mr. Jenkins: The Special Branch, as I think the hon. Gentleman knows, has never been vilified by me. I have the highest regard for its work, and I think it is of peculiar importance at this time. The Special Branch, like the whole of the police, knows that it has to operate within proper limits. It is left in no doubt of that by me. It also knows how much we depend upon its work.
One of the great difficulties of police work is that if, on the one hand, the police fail to give adequate protection to the public, they are bitterly criticised, and if, on the other, they step an inch over the line, they are just as bitterly criticised. This is part of the challenge of police work—to be able to strike the right balance, and a very difficult balance it is. I believe the police know that it is certainly the case that I—as, indeed, any Home Secretary—while accepting my responsibility to the House and to the public, and to our great civil and libertarian ideals, to ensure that proper safeguards are preserved, am still aware of the great debt we owe to the police, including the Special Branch, and in the proper exercise of their function they will have every support from me.

Mr. Carol Mather: Will the Secretary of State give an assurance that the strength of the Special Branch will be maintained? Does he agree that in these very difficult times its strength should be increased?

Mr. Jenkins: This is a function of the strength of the police as a whole. There is certainly no question of not maintaining the strength of the Special Branch, and if it were thought desirable that there should be some slight switch of strength I should of course consider that. However, though I have a certain general supervisory duty, it is a duty of the commissioner and of police constables throughout the country on whom the operational responsibility lies to maintain the proper balance between their various arms. If they made representations to me I would consider them most seriously, but they have not yet done so.
During the past three weeks chief constables have, at the request of the Home Office, been urgently reviewing their requirements for equipment—in par-

ticular, in relation to some of the problems which face us today—with the help of officers from the Police Scientific Development Branch of the Home Office. The object has been to see what further equipment can usefully be deployed. The equipment includes metal detectors, devices for detecting explosives of various sorts, low-dosage X-ray equipment and other devices the details of some of which it would not be in the public interest to reveal.
Security at the ports, as at other places, can never be 100 per cent., but at least it is evident that the measures now being taken provide a significant capability for preventing terrorists, their weapons and explosives from entering the country. No matter what route they choose, bombers and bomb material run an increasing risk of detection.
It is clear, too, that a high proportion of police time has been taken up over the past few years—perhaps not entirely over the past few years—by public demonstrations and other gatherings of people which may result in breaches of the peace or other infringements of the law. In his annual report for 1973 the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police reported that in his police district there had been 445 major events requiring special police arrangements, and the demands made this year have certainly been no less. Such occurrences impose a heavy strain not only on police manpower but also on the patience and endurance of all ranks and on the powers of judgment and decision of the senior officers in control of police operations.
Yet there are considerations which I believe the whole House would wish to accept, both of principle and of a practical nature, which severely limit the scope for action by the Government or by Parliament to relieve the police of this strain. The right of people to assemble freely and to give vocal expression to their opinions, provided they do so peaceably, is not one that any of us would willingly forgo.
The manpower situation is, therefore, central to this debate. The right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East said, "If only the police were fully manned". We can all agree with that. My predecessors in office with whom he served will agree with that, and so would I


have in my previous period in office. There have been some improvements, and the police service is substantially larger than it was when I ceased to be Home Secretary in 1967, but the present picture is not wholly reassuring, and this is clearly no news to the House. Indeed, in some areas of the country it is particularly disturbing, but at the same time we should remember that it is not a picture of unrelieved gloom.
At the end of October the strength of the police service in England and Wales was 101,014. This was a gain of 448 in the first 10 months of this year. Although this is a smaller net increase than in 1973, mainly owing to high wastage in the early months of 1974, the last three months have produced better results. Recruitment is now running at the level of 1973, and the response to national advertisements—a pointer to national recruitment—is currently at a very satisfactory level.
I am glad to say that there was another high intake of police cadets this year which brought the strength up by 305 to a new record level of 5,474. I believe that it is particularly important that we should encourage and sustain the interest of these young people in the police so that they go on to make it their chosen career.
There is a separate point which was raised by the right hon. Gentleman about the age of entry into the force proper as opposed to the cadet force, and I shall come to that in a moment. Although there has been a drop in the number of traffic wardens to 5,885, the number of civil support staff of all kinds has gone up by over 2,000, to 32,427. As the right hon. Gentleman recognised, it is essential to have regard to this very substantial figure, now nearly one-third of police strength, in evaluating the strength of the police today as compared with that of a few decades ago when civilian support was of an entirely different and lesser quantity than that which now persists.
The manpower position, of course, is patchy over the country and is least satisfactory in the larger urban areas, and particularly in the two which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned. In 1973 the metropolitan loss in strength was 522.

So far this year the loss has been just under 200. I find it difficult to know exactly how one ought to evaluate this. To say that this shows a great improvement would, in a sense, be grossly complacent, because a loss of 200 following a loss of 522 means that we are still worse than we were at the end of 1973. On the other hand, I suppose that one can draw somewhat minimal comfort from the decline in the rate of loss, from the flattening out of the adverse curve, but I do not wish to put too much weight upon this. Both the Commissioner and I are doing and will continue to do all we can to improve the position.
Perhaps more important than the flattening out for the year as a whole is that the position has begun to show some improvement in most cases in the last three months, and we must build on these improvements. In the context of what we are doing to improve the manpower figures and in the wider context of what we are doing by way of technical and other support to make the use of the manpower which is available more efficient, I think we can approach 1975 with what I can best describe as cautious optimism. I fully recognise that the individual constable is the service's most vital resource, and our actions must acknowledge this.
In reply to one point made by the right hon. Gentleman, the new pay structure which came into operation following the negotiations early this autumn paid special regard to the long-service constable. That, I think, is of importance because I think we must recognise that however vitally important it is to have a satisfactory promotion structure, and while it is vitally important to back up the individual with the best equipment we can give him, the individual constable, to most people and so far as reality is concerned, is the backbone of the police service. We have to some extent recognised and met that matter.
I come to the subject of pay to which the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East drew attention and on which I believe we have made some worth while progress recently. In July of this year the Police Council reached agreement on new pay scales for the federated ranks and for superintendents with effect from 1st September. Besides the increase in basic pay, there were three significant


features of the settlement: first, the introduction of a pay supplement to compensate for the considerable number of unsocial hours worked by the police; second, the full achievement of equal pay for women officers, which I regard as an important step in ensuring that women are given an equal opportunity in the police service and in ensuring that we make the best use of their potential; third, the introduction of further long-service increments to encourage officers to stay in the service.
The overall result was a substantial increase for all ranks. As an example, a newly appointed constable outside London now gets £1,632 per annum, an increase of £279 or 20·6 per cent. over the same date last year. In addition, all police officers get threshold payments amounting to £229·68 and either free quarters or rent allowance in lieu.
In the context of pay I would draw attention to the Police Council agreement, as a result of which the London allowance for the federated ranks and superintendents was increased from £74 to £275 a year, paid from 1st April last. I think it was a considerable act of statesmanship on the part of the Police Federation that while it had always been, for understandable reasons, attached to national scales broadly, it was prepared, even though nearly four-fifths of its members are outside the metropolitan area, to agree to this significant differential for the Metropolitan Police. That made it possible for us to go forward some reasonably significant distance, and I hope this will be helpful.
Finally on the question of pay, I should tell the House that when the recent pay settlement was concluded the Police Council agreed to undertake a review of the structure of police pay, and a working party of the council was set up. Several meetings have already been held, and a report will be submitted to the council next year. I assure the House that the Government will take that report and any recommendations which the council make on it very seriously. We want this matter looked at fundamentally.
Money, however, is not the only factor, though it is of great importance. We are making determined efforts to assist the local recruitment arrangements made by chief officers of police by central pub-

licity and by the provision of advice, equipment and facilities. Nearly £700,000 will be spent by the Government this year on national publicity for recruiting, and the Commissioner is spending £130,000 on publicity for the Metropolitan Police alone. The provision of funds for local publicity, which is in addition to the national effort, is a matter for individual police authorities, and I have encouraged them to provide the funds needed. I hope that the same degree of effort can be continued during 1975.
We are in touch also on a slightly different, and difficult, manpower issue— the right hon. Gentleman referred to it —that is, the age limit on entry into the police. I have considered this recently. It would be wrong in any way to reduce the standards for entry into the service simply in an effort to improve the number of police officers. The House will at once accept that we should not be getting anywhere if we suddenly produced figures which showed that we had solved the manpower problem but as a result of reducing standards we had a service which could not do the job as effectively as it had. We must maintain standards.
But that does not mean that we must maintain the age. In the past, it has been generally accepted that 19 was the lowest age at which there was any chance of finding young people of sufficient maturity to hold the responsible and ancient office of constable. I am not sure that this still holds good, and I am conscious that many of the young people who leave school between the ages of 18 and 19 want to start straight away in their chosen career and if we miss them in that year we may never get them back. I am conscious also of the recommendation to this effect in the Seventh Report of the Expenditure Committee.
These issues have been considered by a working group of the Police Advisory Board, and a report on them is to be considered by the board at its next meeting.
As I have made clear to the House, and as I made clear also to the Police Federation at its conference at Scarborough which I addressed last October and on other relevant occasions, I am anxious to make progress in this matter, and I believe that that is the general wish of the House. However, it is important to carry police opinion with us on the


matter. Otherwise, we might make progress at the expense of a set-back in other respects. However, accepting what the right hon. Gentleman said and what I believe to be the general view, I assure the House that we shall endeavour, compatibly with carrying police opinion with us, to move in that direction, and I am not unhopeful of the outcome.
I shall now briefly draw together some of the threads in the London situation, although, as a Birmingham Member, I know very well that much of what I say will relate also to the West Midlands and to some other conurbations.
The problems facing the police in London are particularly heavy. It is a matter not merely of crime but of the range of other factors which go to make up the environment in which police officers have to live and work. Demonstrations make great inroads into the private as well as the working lives of the police. There are housing and other difficulties. The manpower situation grows on these and feeds the problems from which it springs. It is no pleasure for any Home Secretary to have to refer to net losses in the force for which he has particular responsibility, and small comfort, as I have said, to be able to say that the net loss this year is smaller than it was last year. But these figures do not yet reflect the increase in pay or the London allowance to which I have referred, and nor do they take account of the relatively encouraging position in the recruitment of women and of cadets into the Metropolitan Police.
The right hon. Gentleman stressed that police expenditure should be freed—I was about to say freed of all constraints, but that would be unfair to him—of unreasonable constraints. I thought that he put the point very reasonably. An old phrase always comes to one's mind in this context. I think that it was said of Sir William Harcourt, the founder of the Special Branch, apart from other matters, —a reference to whom is very appropriate to our discussions—that he was a radical in every Department but his own. There is no danger of that in my case, I need hardly say, but there is a danger of being an economiser in every Department but one's own, or even one's own shadow Department. However, I do not

feel that could be laid against the right hon. Gentleman this evening.
The right hon. Gentleman asked for assurances that we were giving sufficient priority to the police. I hope that by my words I have made reasonably clear that we are so doing. By our actions we shall give them full support in their exercise of their proper functions. Provision has accordingly been made in the rate support grant negotiations for an increase of 1,000 police officers next year. I wish to make clear also that if more are forthcoming within authorised establishments—we all know that in the undermanned forces there is a long way to go to authorised establishments— specific grant will be paid on the additional expenditure involved.
One has to have regard to the need for public expenditure to be stringently controlled, and no one would suggest, even in the case of the police, that we should say, "You can spend money without worrying about it." That would not be good for any service or any part of public expenditure at a time when it must be stringently controlled. However, I believe that the House will accept as both helpful and realistic the attitude to the police which I have just carefully defined—1,000 officers provided for, and if more are forthcoming specific grant will be paid.
This is a short though important debate and, after the right hon. Gentleman's succinct opening, I intend to reply fairly succinctly, too. We are concerned about what we ask of the police and what we enable them to do to carry out those tasks, especially as the tasks increase, and I hope that I have given some indication of the attitude which the Government adopt. I do not pretend that it will solve all the problems, but I believe that it provides a proper basis on which to go forward.
There is one advantage in being Home Secretary for the second time. As it happens, I am the first recidivist Home Secretary since Sir John Simon, though whether that is an entirely admirable recommendation I am not quite sure. However, one advantage in being Home Secretary for the second time is that it enables one to look with a certain small sweep of perspective at least over how things have developed during the nine


years, or nearly nine years, since I first assumed this office. One thing I can say with confidence is that police morale, in spite of the problems, in spite of the shortages, is higher today than it was nine years ago. I believe that one reason for this is that the police feel the dependence of the public upon them at a time when the fabric of our civilisation is under some challenge, and they are approaching their task with a degree of responsibility, and even humility, which should sometimes go with responsibility, recognising that their relations with the public, always a delicate balance, are better now than they have been for some time past.
I think the police take pride, and rightly so, in their high standing in public esteem, which is shown by the polls and other experiences. They recognise that this must be preserved and built upon by devotion to duty and by restrained exercise of their powers. I believe that this is an important and invaluable factor and the House tonight from this debate should send out a message of encouragement and support to the police in the many and difficult tasks which they have to perform in these peculiarly difficult years.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton): Before I call upon the next hon. Member to speak I remind the House that a considerable number of hon. Members wish to take part in the debate which will be fairly short. Reasonably short speeches would be helpful all round.

7.51 p.m.

Mr. Fergus Montgomery: At the outset I wish to say how much I agree with the Home Secretary's closing words. All of us here have a duty to support the police in their difficult task.
This is the first time I have spoken in the House as the Member for Altrincham and Sale, but since I have spent 12 years in the House it cannot by any degree be categorised as a maiden speech, and therefore I cannot crave the indulgence of the House and expect to make the speech without interruption from the Government benches.
Some years ago there was an American musical called "Finian's Rainbow". One

of the songs in it was called "When I'm Not Near the Girl That I Love, I Love the Girl I'm Near". Its sentiment bears a certain similarity to hon. Members who change their constituencies more than once. From 1959 to 1964 I represented Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East and I thought that it was the greatest constituency in the country. The electors there decided that I was not the greatest Member and sent me packing. On April 1967 I came back to the House at a by-election as the Member for Brierley Hill. That lasted until February 1974, and on that occasion it was not the electors who sent me packing but the Boundary Commissioners who decided that Brierley Hill was much too large a constituency and abolished it.
Naturally, during the time that I represented Brierley Hill I thought it was the greatest constituency in the country. Now that I represent Altrincham and Sale I feel without doubt that it is the greatest constituency in the country. It has great things to commend it because its sensible electorate has sent Conservatives to Parliament for as many years as anyone can remember.
This is the time to pay tribute to my predecessor, Tony Barber. When I first came here in 1959 he was a junior Minister. Over the years he rose up the political ladder and the great thing about him was that he never changed as a person. He was always one of the most approachable Ministers in Conservative Governments and in the constituency he was immensely popular and respected. I am sure that I speak for hon. Members on both sides of the House when I say that we are delighted at his recent honour and we have no doubt that his great gifts and knowledge will be of enormous value to the other place.
We are debating a most important issue. Britain has the best police force in the world. The Home Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) have both drawn attention to the problems of under-manning. Those problems exist not only in the Metropolitan area but in all our great urban areas where there seems to be a greater prevalence of crime. On 12th June 1973 there was a debate initiated by the now right hon. Member for Hertford and Stevenage (Mrs. Williams). She said then that the Government of the day,


which was a Conservative Government, had failed to deal with the serious under-manning which existed in certain police forces, notably the Metropolitan Police. On 2nd December this year the Undersecretary of State for the Home Department gave information which showed that under-manning still exists. Therefore what was happening in June 1973 and for which a Conservative Government was censured is still prevalent, and we are in the same position.

Mr. William Molloy: Surely the hon. Member would want to add that at least now the police are better paid.

Mr. Montgomery: Perhaps the pay is better, but the cost of living has also risen and it is therefore doubtful whether policemen are any better off.
We have been told that recruitment is continuing, but although new men are joining the force there is a great deal of wastage among experienced police officers. When I represented a West Midlands constituency the chief constable told me that he had undertaken a most expensive recruiting campaign. The force had gone particularly to Wales to try to recruit men and it had done extremely well. But at the end of the year the number of recruits taken in more or less just counterbalanced the number of men who were lost through wastage. The great tragedy is that recruits have to be trained whereas the people who are leaving the force are experienced police officers whom the force cannot afford to lose.
We must discover the causes of wastage and try to rectify them. Undoubtedly the first point that any policeman will draw attention to is pay. Recently in a newspaper there were two advertisements, one for traffic wardens and the other for policemen. One offered 18-year-old girls as traffic wardens working regular hours basic pay of £2,000 a year. On the same page the other advertisement offered a 19-year-old policeman who would be doing shift work and therefore unsocial hours £1,757 per annum. In that situation it is no wonder that the police get disgruntled. They work unsocial hours and there is little compensation for that.
The hours cause domestic tensions because wives dislike it when their husbands

are working and when their friends and their friends' husbands can go out to enjoy themselves. The policeman's wife must stay at home and baby-sit while her husband is at work. Policemen can have their rest days cancelled at 24 hours or even 12 hours notice. This again puts a strain on family life.
The Home Secretary has talked about the London allowance for officers in the Metropolitan Police. It is being increased by a further £201 a year, and I think that they have already received £74 a year. The difficulty is, however, that although they will get the increased London allowance they will lose one additional rest day per month. A police constable with over 17 years service will lose £156 a year because I believe that he gets £13 under current arrangements for working each of these additional rest days. If that £156 and the amount he pays in tax on his increase in the London allowance is subtracted, the officer will end with very little more than when he started.
The situation will worsen because in September 1975 the police are due to lose a second additional rest day per month with a third going as from January 1976. Unless there is a substantial pay increase in the coming year, therefore, the loss of these three additional rest days will mean a drop in the living standards of constables working in the Metropolitan area.
There has been no mention so far in the debate about the disciplinary code. I hope that the Home Secretary will look at this point. We all realise the reasons for the code, but it is farcical that if a policeman appears before a court on a speeding charge he can be fined and have his licence endorsed and he can then find himself appearing before the police on a further disciplinary charge. Therefore, he could be punished twice for the same crime.
I suppose that the argument is that the police must set an example, but Members of Parliament are responsible for legislation. If an hon. Member is caught speeding he appears in court, and is fined, but that is the end of the matter. Some of our local associations might have something to say about it, but speeding would not necessarily mean that the hon. Member concerned would be kicked out by his constituency party. I cannot understand


why the police should be treated differently from any other section of the population.
The police are doing a more difficult job than they have ever done. There has been a decline in discipline in our schools, and this presents tremendous problems. There is less respect for authority, symbolised by violence at football matches and the vandalism on football specials.
The policeman all too often sees the rule of law collectively defied. We have had recent problems with picket lines, when public order was upheld and people were injured. There is then the outcry of police brutality, all too unfairly. If pickets are allowed to do as they like, the other section of the community says that the police are failing in their duty.
I hope that I shall not be accused of being too musical if I recall that years ago Gilbert and Sullivan wrote "The Pirates of Penzance", in which the hit song was "A Policeman's Lot is Not a Happy One". That is very true today. It is up to us to try to ensure that the policeman's lot is made a little happier. There are certain matters we must consider. Basic pay is an important item. A policeman does the job because he wants to do it. But love of job does not pay the rent or mortgage. The policeman's holidays should also be considered. The total annual leave allowance of a police constable with less than 10 years' service is 18 days.
In police recruitment we are competing all the time against industry and commerce. Compared with the conditions in industry and commerce, conditions in the police leave a great deal to be desired.
Unless these matters are put right, wastage in our police forces will continue. It must be stopped if we are to maintain our proud record of having the best police force in the world.

8.2 p.m.

Mr. William Molloy: I am sure that the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Montgomery) will forgive me if I do not follow closely the lines of either his musical submissions or the opening part of his speech. I was not sure whether he seemed more like the advertisement that we often see, saying "Keep moving", or the ghost of the Vicar of Bray.
The correct tone was set by the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph), and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary responded to that opening with his analysis of the situation. When they realise that they have men here of the calbre of my right hon. Friend and the right hon. Gentleman, the police forces will understand that they need not fear that their case will never be properly put in the House. Perhaps it is the great attribute of the House that when we debate issues of this character, the fundamental concepts that we all share are so ably voiced by both Front Bench speakers.
I shall do my best to accede to your request for brief speeches, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and therefore I shall confine myself to the Metropolitan Police, as my constituency is in outer London. Many of the problems of the forces in the outer London boroughs are much greater than those in the inner London boroughs. It has rightly been said that the Metropolitan Police probably have many more difficulties and duties than police forces in other parts of the country. Because we are the capital city and the centre of the British Commonwealth, and for a variety of other reasons, the Commissioner of Police in the metropolitan area and of his staff, down to every constable, are that little more under constant pressure than any of the other forces in the land.
I am all for demonstrations. As my right hon. Friend said, and the right hon. Gentleman agreed, it is vital that the principle of free speech be maintained, within the terms of law and order. Apart from the problem of demonstrations, we have seen an increase in crime. In some newspapers and magazines we find an absurd inference, perhaps not intended, that there is a relationship between the increase in crime and the police, as if the police were responsible for that increase.
In a debate about our police forces we must go a little wider than just to talk about the police. Everyone in public life must examine the society we have been creating, a society which has made life much more difficult for our police forces. Many people who would have liked to become police officers have decided that it is not worth the candle. In the past few decades there has been


an enormous increase in all the ugly aspects of our vulgar, acquisitive society.
Police officers to whom I have spoken have been rather distressed by some sentences imposed by the courts. As an extreme example, train robbers who stole a couple of hundredweights of paper called pound notes, and injured the driver, were sent to prison for 30 years but a hit-and-run driver in my constituency was fined £60. Hit-and-run drivers sometimes take the police many months to apprehend. The police are most diligent in trying to search out the awful people who hit and run and often kill people.
It is very difficult for the police to complain about such sentences, but the House should take note of the examples I have given. In between those two extremes a number of other instances could be quoted. Such examples are bound to have an effect on the morale of the police.
There is another matter which I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will note and raise with the Lord Chancellor or my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General. In the Metropolitan area, in particular, police officers are discovering that when they make arrests, and when summonses are issued for a variety of crimes, many months pass before those who have been apprehended can be brought before the magistrates' courts. Yet there are disputes between the magistrates and the local authorities about the building of magistrates' courts. That is not a satisfactory state of affairs. I ask my hon. Friend to take cognisance of what I have said.
A few years ago I contributed to a debate in this House, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. Stewart), who is also present, about the decision to end the work undertaken by 40 or 50 police officers whose duty had been to go round the metropolis teaching fifth and sixth formers, who were about to leave school, the essentials of how to ride a motor-cycle or drive a motor car. At the same time they had taught young children how urgent and serious it was to understand what was meant, for example, by the Belisha beacons and safety crossings. It seemed at the time that this was a most sensible piece of teaching. It brought young children and those on the threshold of

life in contact with police officers in a friendly and sensible way.
Alas, there had to be cuts and there had to be a reduction in some of the extra responsibilities undertaken by the police. Consequently, the useful squads of police officers who went round the schools in the Greater London area were disbanded. We should reinstate a similar squad. I feel sure that the commissioner and senior officers would be only too keen to examine the possibility of a closer liaison with education authorities, and for the police to be able to visit our schools to talk to youngsters just about to leave school on the attractions of joining the police force.
In my constituency many exhibitions are held by industrialists. They are held with a view to persuading young people to become apprentices in certain industries. They put forward the attractions of working in those industries. The police sometimes contribute but often, because of their enormous duties, they find that they cannot take part. I ask my right hon. Friend to consider that proposal in more detail.
Very often police officers in the London boroughs find that much local government legislation, for the enforcement of which they are responsible, could more easily be enforced if there were some sensible liaison between the local police force and the local authority. The suggestions I have made could contribute to making the policeman's lot a happier one.
It is essential that he should have the pay and the conditions of service, not merely to make his job worth while but so that he or she will feel that they are getting a just reward for the magnificent service that they give to the community. Notwithstanding the awards that have been made—I echo what my right hon. Friend said about the patience and good will of the federation in accepting the London weighting allowance for police officers in the Metropolitan area—I believe that remuneration for constables up to the middle grades is not equal to the demands that are made on their services. That situation must be tackled if we are to attract the right sort of people into our police forces. We must ensure that in the structure of the police


forces a career is offered which is worth while undertaking.
I believe that we can instil such a feeling into young people who are just about to leave school. I believe that we can introduce to them the idea of joining the police forces. They will do so if they feel confident that there is a career ahead of them which will be well worth while. If they enter the service with that attitude there will be no danger of the magnificent name which the police forces now rightly enjoy being tarnished in any way.

8.15 p.m.

Mr. Jonathan Aitken: I shall concentrate my remarks on the need to expand and strengthen the Special Constabulary. I claim a modest degree of first-hand knowledge and experience as I served for five years as a special constable in what was then the East Suffolk County Police.
It is well known—and it has been said already many times this evening—that the regular police forces are under-manned, overworked and overstretched. That is a situation which is likely to worsen before it improves because of such strains on police manpower as the increase in the number of demonstrations, especially in London, and the frightening rise in terrorist activities, which are likely to continue.
Against that background it should be obvious to everyone that our society will benefit from having a well-trained and efficient police reserve supporting the regular police at all times, and particularly at times of tension, violence or when increased vigilance is required to combat and to prevent terrorism.
The foundations of such a reserve already exist in the shape of the Special Constabulary. It is my contention that the Government should start to build on those admirable foundations by seeking to increase the number of and to improve the effectiveness of our special constables. It is extraordinary that such a policy should be a matter of controversy. It is not a matter of controversy among the senior ranks of the police. Undoubtedly the overwhelming number of chief constables, and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, would give their fullest support to such a policy.
There is controversy and opposition at what might be called the shop steward level of the police forces. The obstacles

to progress is the attitude of mind of the Police Federation towards the Special Constabulary. At best its attitude is one of patronising condescension towards the specials, and at worst one of outright prejudice and hostility. If the House thinks that I am exaggerating, there is no need for it to look further than the November issue of the Police Federation's magazine entitled Police. On page 9 of that issue the editor saw fit to publish four somewhat offensive cartoons depicting special constables as geriatric halfwits who hinder rather than help the police. We might be inclined to dismiss those cartoons as jokes in rather bad taste were it not for the remarks, on special constables, which are published on another page, of the secretary of the Police Federation. The magazine sets out the views of Sergeant Les Male, which can be paraphrased simply as "Specials go home".
Sergeant Male makes it clear that the federation does not want specials supplementing police strengths on a regular basis even in such minor matters as directing holiday traffic at large summer gatherings. He does not want specials having a rank other than constable. The federation does not regard specials as anything other than an impediment to the recruitment of regular police force officers. Sergeant Male went on to say that the only time specials could be useful was in time of major emergencies such as the two world wars.
That is the attitude of the Police Federation. It is high time that someone denounced its sentiments as prejudiced and antiquated claptrap that has no place in Britain in 1974. In case the federation has not noticed, we already have a serious emergency that has been created by terrorists. In such circumstances, and with talk in the air of private armies, we cannot regard the police forces as a closed shop in which there is no room for a volunteer reserve of special constables working in support of the civil power.
The attitude that I have outlined shows that the federation is in danger of behaving like dinosaurs in an IRA world. We need extra police manpower for increased vigilance at stations, airports, shopping centres, public houses and all places that are potential bomb targets for attack. We need extra manpower


for handling demonstrations so that police officers, especially those from the Metropolitan Police, can spend more than one weekend out of eight with their families. This kind of extra manpower cannot be recruited on a full-time basis. There is not the money and there are not the men willing to take on the jobs on a full-time basis. However, the manpower could easily be recruited from an expanded and better-trained Special Constabulary which is in no way in competition with the regular police.
I should like to be personal for a moment. I joined the Special Constabulary at the age of 20 because I wanted to do some form of worth while and useful service to the community in which I was living. In doing regular duty on the beat and in a patrol car I came across the whole gamut of police experience from coping with appalling road accidents to dealing with crime. Such experience was certainly valuable to me as a younger man, and I hope it was of some small value to the community at large. As I found it such a worth while form of community service, so I believe would thousands of other young people given the slightest encouragement to enter the Special Constabulary.
The one force in which there has been encouragement for the specials, where it can be measured, is the Metropolitan Police. Last year, thanks partly to the enthusiasm for the Specials by the Commissioner, the Specials were given a £10,000 grant, now increased to £12,000, which was spent almost entirely on publicity. As a result, in that one year the strength of the Special Constabulary in the Metropolitan Police has increased from 1,600 to 2,100—an increase of nearly 30 per cent. That is an indication that there is a source of voluntary manpower ready, willing and able to be harnessed in fighting the war against crime and terrorism alongside and in support of the regular police.
Unfortunately, what is being done in the Metropolitan Police is not being done to the same extent in other areas. Indeed, I believe that the Home Office is displaying a somewhat lethargic attitude towards the Special Constabulary.
I should like to give three examples of this lethargy. First, the Home Secretary

announced two months ago that he was setting up of special police advisory board to look into the future of the Special Constabulary. Yet this police advisory board is not to meet until 5th February, and no one has yet been appointed to it. Why has there been such a slow and rather slack attitude to this important police advisory board?
Secondly, the Home Office's budget for national advertising for special constables has been reduced in the current year. Why has this reduction been thought necessary?
Thirdly, I was sorry that in an excellent speech the Home Secretary made no mention of the Special Constabulary. I think that if a senior Home Office Minister were to come out clearly in saying that Britain needs more special constables and that it is Government policy, supported by all political parties, to strengthen and expand our Special Constabulary, it would make a great impact.
I have deliberately stirred things up a little in the debate, because I feel so strongly that the Special Constabulary should be encouraged to play a greater part in supporting the civil power in these dangerous times. The hour is great and the attitude of mind of the Police Federation is regrettably small. Now is the time for a political initiative to be taken by the Government to strengthen and expand the Special Constabulary.

8.23 p.m.

Mr. John Prescott: Like my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, I consider that more time should be given by Parliament to debate police matters. I do not think that we have got matters in the correct perspective, because many important issues are involved. We in Parliament often pass legislation which places the police in great difficulties in carrying out their already difficult job.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary opened a new police station in my constituency last weekend. Therefore, I should like to identify myself with what has been said tonight about giving the police proper conditions, wages, and the best facilities to carry out the job that Parliament gives them. I think that we tend to expect too much of the police in solving some of our problems. Indeed, sometimes the problems with which they


have to deal as a result of legislation are but symptoms of greater social problems.
In the limited time that I have to discuss the matter I want to concentrate on the issue of confidence in our police. I think that we would all agree that the police are increasingly moving into more delicate social areas, such as race relations, trade union disputes and civil liberties. There may be offences being committed in those areas, but I think we must admit that they are highly sensitive areas, which are liable to misinterpretation and charges of lack of confidence in those carrying out and enforcing the law —the police.
At the same time the law is being increasingly challenged. On a number of occasions I have endeavoured to justify incidents which constituted breaking the law. However, we are not debating that matter tonight. The real point is that there is an ever-increasing challenge to the rule of law.
I want to draw attention to trade union activities in this context. People will bring to mind picketing demonstrations, and so on, during industrial disputes which have been seen on television. In industrial relations and trade union activity there is great sensitivity, and in this context a great deal of activity is carried out by the Special Branch. Mention has already been made of the Special Branch, but knowledge of its activities is not as easily available as is knowledge about the ordinary uniformed police.
The Special Branch was originally set up to deal with Irish terrorists and to combat a "potential threat to the State". I believe that is the term that is considered when something deserves the attention of the Special Branch.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said that the Special Branch operates within proper limits. People think that Special Branch activities are largely concerned with terrorists, particularly in the context of the legislation that we passed two weeks ago. But it is beginning to become clear from a number of incidents that the Special Branch is involved in matters which certainly do not constitute a potential threat to the State. I appreciate that what is considered a potential threat to the State is capable of many interpretations. How-

ever, I should like to draw to the attention of the House cases which do not in any way pose potential threats to the State.
Before coming to the particular incidents, it is important to be aware of the kind of activities involved. One is the encouragement in certain cases of agents provocateurs in industrial disputes, photographing demonstrations and various industrial disputes and asking people to identify the persons depicted in them. Another function of the Special Branch is to maintain surveillance and to conduct searches. Those are the normal activities of the Special Branch, but in industrial relations they can be counter-productive and I question whether the Special Branch even has a rôle in industrial relations.
What is my evidence? As a seaman I saw Special Branch activities with my own eyes. The Special Branch was involved in the seamen's disputes. Evidence has been made available to the House, for Questions have been asked and there has been correspondence with Home Office Ministers.
The manager of one company that was engaged in a dispute—the Strachans Company, of Eastleigh—admitted that he was the contact man for the Special Branch, that he fed it information about his workers, and that files on the workers in his plant were prepared, apparently because one of them belonged to the International Socialist Group. It might be said that such a man was a potential threat to the State, and although I do not accept that argument I appreciate that it could be used. The question is whether the Home Secretary is prepared to justify Special Branch activities in highly sensitive political areas where terrorism is not involved.
Another example concerns nurses in Kent, who, in May of this year were engaged in a dispute. It was admitted by a chief constable that a Special Branch man had been present at a demonstration and had had a camera with him. It was asked why he had had a camera and it was then said that there was no film in it. The point is that photography is a principal activity of the Special Branch, and this raises fundamental questions. Who decides what organisation—the nurses, the seamen or other industrial


workers—shall be brought to the attention of the Special Branch? Who decides what constitutes a threat to the security of the State, and what definitions does the Home Secretary use to determine that? Does the possibility of violence have to arise, or is it merely the disruption that occurs from an industrial dispute?
Once a photograph has been taken by a Special Branch man, he has to have identification of the people involved in, say, a dispute, and so he goes to the industrial organisations concerned and asks whether the people in a photograph can be identified. What are the rights of an individual who is asked to identify a person in those circumstances? Is he asked to co-operate in protecting the security of the State? What if he refuses to co-operate? Is he put under any kind of direct or indirect pressure if he refuses?
What is the position of managers who are recruited into working for the Special Branch, directly or indirectly, and into reporting on workers about whom files may be compiled? Whatever one's views about these matters, it must be accepted that these are highly sensitive areas and that it is at least questionable whether the Special Branch should act in this way in our society.
Because time for this debate is short, I am not able to deal in detail with the Starritt inquiry into the killing of Kenneth Joseph Lennon by unknown persons. I hope Parliament will provide time. Lennon was killed in April of this year. The courts have accepted that he was a police informer, possibly an agent provocateur, but they have refused to order the Special Branch men involved to attend, even though there was a plea by the defence that they should attend the court so that their rôle in the matter could be ascertained. As Lennon is dead, it is clear that the only persons with relevant information are the Special Branch men, and yet the courts have refused a defence plea that those officers should be brought before the courts.

Mr. Aitken: Before the hon. Gentleman goes any further with this conspiracy theory of bluebottles under the trade union bed, and the Special Branch, will he allow me to say, as someone who has been under surveillance by Special Branch and brought to trial at the Old Bailey,

that I do not accept his sinister picture of Special Branch men, and that my experience of them, however distasteful it was for me to be prosecuted by the Special Branch, was that they behaved as totally professional police officers, with complete rectitude? That is a more accurate picture than the hon. Gentleman is giving us.

Mr. Prescott: I am sorry that I gave way to the hon. Gentleman. He may well believe that those Special Branch officers acted correctly. He may think that taking photographs is acting correctly, and that identifying industrial workers in dispute and compiling files about them is acting correctly. Knowing his views on these subjects, I am not surprised.
The main issue is whether those activities are correct, and whether that is what the Special Branch ought to do. The hon. Gentleman does not have to accept my view of the matter. The courts have been increasingly concerned about the rôle of agents provocateurs and police informers, and the Lennon case has made clear that there is that concern.
The inquiry into the Lennon affair was conducted by the police themselves, unfortunately, which does not give the greatest confidence in the validity of inquiries when the activities of the police are questioned.
What is true is that the offence of entrapment which has been evident in some cases is one which the courts are not prepared to entertain. That must be of serious concern to Parliament because, although the Home Office has certain rules, in these cases the actions are not challengeable. My concern is that the courts have refused to deal with the activities of the Special Branch.
In these delicate areas where confidence in our police force is increasingly required, certain essential steps must be taken to improve the situation. First, there should be an independent body to consider complaints against the police. Such a step would be supported by a number of policemen. The Home Secretary made it clear that he supports the principle, and I hope that within the next six months that procedure will be brought into being. It is known that the police organisations are opposed to such a procedure, but I must tell the House that a number of policemen in my area and


other areas feel that an independent inquiry would provide a fairer way of dealing with complaints and that such a body would give the public more confidence in the police.
I said during the Second Reading debate on the terrorism Bill that we should have to look for the compilation of a Bill of Rights. Lord Scarman, in his speech, made a substantial case for the establishment of such a Bill, and Parliament should consider that as a means of protecting the rights of individuals. The use of Judges' Rules, and the law of detention, is increasingly being flouted and individuals rights threatened.
Parliament should institute some kind of check upon the activities of the Special Branch, so that we may take into account its activities in security matters, which I accept in certain rôles. There should be public accountability, because the rights of individuals are involved in these matters. We are not able to debate the findings of the Starritte inquiry because time is short, but Parliament should establish some form of council to look into matters affecting security, thereby ensuring that there is public accountability.
No one denies that the police have a difficult job to do, but the areas in which the Special Branch carries out its activities have been increased by recent legislation and the activities of those concerned should not go unchecked. If their actions are right they will be justified, but if they are not they should be considered carefully, in the interests of all concerned. We must restrict the power that we give by ensuring that there is adequate supervision. It is important to do this for the sake of the rights and freedoms of all within our society.

8.38 p.m.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Jenkins) in his admirable speech, described himself as the first recidivist Home Secretary in this House. In declaring an interest I feel that I am doing so as one recidivist speaking to another, for while I have no interests to declare at this moment I shall tomorrow resume my post as adviser to the Police Federation, and I am proud to do so.
The Home Secretary said that after some years he has returned to the Home Office to find the police stronger— "better equipped", I think he said—and certainly more warmly regarded by their fellow citizens than at any time previously. I think he is right in that, but if the police have grown in strength, in equipment and in the regard of their fellows, the pressures on them have grown very much faster.
In the interests of saving time it would be wrong to attempt to survey the whole scene. I merely list briefly some of the rising pressures upon the police today. Crime is growing in both violence and complexity. I wonder whether the House has any idea of the number of police hours that are spent in disentangling a major fraud.
With regard to the traffic problem, there are 15 million cars and it is a matter not simply of directing them but of the enormous carnage which they create in life and limb and their use as accessories to crime. There are also demonstrations, not only of a political but of an industrial character—strikes, pickets, sit-ins, and so on. Justified of not, they invariably place new pressures on the police.
There are also particular pressures in urban areas which perhaps we fail to recognise. I wonder whether hon. Members realise how great an additional pressure tourists place on the Metropolitan Police. The police are also concerned with football crowds, the need to protect embassies, and the drug problem.
There is an ever-increasing list of legislation with which the police are concerned. As the Secretary of State for Energy this afternoon listed the new speed limits and the restrictions on the use of heating in factories and advertising signs—measures with which we all agree—I wonder how many Members gave a second thought to the additional burden which they must place on our limited police.
The pressures on the police increase all the time. In return, what should this House give to the police if they are to do their job well? First, they need more and better equipment. This pays off. Few pieces of equipment have done more in the cause of effective policing than the personal radio. It is time that


the Minister's technicians were given the job of linking the personal radio of the police officer on the beat directly with the police in the motor car and not simply through the collator at the station. That is a small piece of technology which would enormously improve communications.
We must eventually have some form of computerised national finger print bank. I am reluctant to say that, and I appreciate hon. Members' misgivings about it, but the police can no longer forgo such scientific aids. It is also with considerable reluctance that I say, as my hon. Friend the Member for Peters-field (Mr. Mates) said the other day in an admirable maiden speech, that, taking the advantages and disadvantages together, we shall probably have to introduce some form of identity card, at least for people who frequently move between Ireland and this country.
Secondly, the police need much better housing, especialy in city centres. During an average weekend in central London, 1,000 or 2,000 police constables are needed to maintain public safety in the face of demonstrations. How many hon. Members realise that many young constables must commute from the suburbs because they are the only places in which they can afford to live? Normally police constables cannot afford to rent houses in central London. I should be reluctant to recommend the use of police barracks —there are great problems in that—but I ask the Under-Secretary of State to recognise that major demonstrations in city centres cannot be dealt with by commuting policemen. It is essential to house in city centres constables who are on immediate call.
A third necessity is for the police to stay close to the people.
The strength of the British police is that they are rooted in the community and that they and their wives and children live with the people.
I remember some years ago attending the passing out parade of the California Highway Patrol, which is possibly the best police force in the United States. As he was removing his uniform at the end of the day one young man told me that he always took it off because when he got home he did not want his neigh-

bours to know that he was a policeman. I understand the reasons. In the United States, to be known as a policeman in a neighbourhood can often be a grave disadvantage to a man's wife and family. How different it is in this country, where most of our fellow citizens are proud to have a policeman as their neighbour.
I remember the late Sir Joseph Simpson, when Commissioner of Police, telling me that in his opinion a police officer who spends a few moments helping an old lady to cross the road is doing just as much of a job as is the CID officer who is dealing with major crime. It is this relationship of trust between our unarmed civil police and our civil population that is our best source both of intelligence and of that continuing community support which is the policeman's strongest arm.
The police need the continuing, never-ending support of the House and the public. That is why I so much welcomed what the Home Secretary said and so much deplored some of the undocumented remarks made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott). What the police require above all else is the knowledge that Parliament, the public, the Press and their fellow-countrymen are behind them.
The police believe firmly in the rule of law. To us "the rule of law" is a phrase, but it is the police officer's staff of life. I say to hon. Gentlemen on the Government benches that the law is a seamless garment. It cannot be broken in Clay Cross and maintained in Birmingham. The law is the law, and those who seek to break it simply because they feel strongly about a certain matter, or because they back one group or the other, sincere as they may be, are only harming the cause of the British police.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Harry Ewing): Will the hon. Gentleman say whether his remarks refer to the farmers who were recently involved in serious trouble?

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: My remarks apply to everyone. The law is the law, and it applies to farmers, ratepayers and trade unionists alike. We want to hear from the Government side a clear declaration that the law applies to all men regardless of political persuasion.
Above all, the police need enough men to do the job. Police forces are well below establishment. Numbers can be helped by civilianisation, although civilians normally work from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. and expect the regular police to do the rest of the duty. Specials have a rôle. I noted what my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) said, and I shall make it my business to enable him to meet officers of the Police Federation so that he may dispose of any difficulty he may have with cartoons. Equipment, too, can help, but in the end there is no substitute for an adequate number of policemen. I shall not weary the House with the figures. I shall refer only to the Metropolitan Police. Its strength today amounts to just over 21,000, but its establishment is 26,628. In numbers the Metropolitan Police force is actually losing ground.
How are we to resolve this problem? I very much welcome what the Home Secretary said about the review being undertaken by the Police Council. That is an important move, and those conclusions cannot come too soon. I hope that the Minister will confirm that this review will include the whole range of matters pertaining to the police, such as establishment, working conditions, pay, and all the rest of it.
Even more welcome was the Home Secretary's announcement that rate support grant this year will include provision for 1,000 more constables, with the implication that this would not stand in the way of further recruiting up to establishment in the forces. But in welcoming those improvements I must remind the House that by adding 1,000 constables to the force we shall increase the total number by just on 1 per cent. An increased figure of 1 per cent. comes nowhere near the manpower necessary to cope with the growing pressures on the police force.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) said in his excellent speech, the police force is expensive. In round terms the force costs at least £500 million a year. Therefore, if we are to advocate what my right hon. Friend said in terms of an increase in police manpower, we owe it to the House to say how we would finance it.
I speak tonight from the back benches. I do not in any sense seek to com-

mit my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler). But I believe that the national need is not for 1,000 more but closer to 5,000 more constables over the next three or four years—and for a total increase of 10,000 more constables by the early part of the next decade. I believe that it is possible to recruit that number, and it is certainly highly desirable that we should do so.
I end with one reflection. Last week Mr. Speaker received his first issue of beef coupons. Many members of the other place, including many on the bench of bishops and many other senior citizens of substantial income also received their beef coupons from the Government, at a total cost to the Exchequer of some £33 million a year. At the same time we must remember that this year the subsidy on imported cheese—not British cheese but Camembert, and the like—will amount to one-third of the total cheese subsidy of £44 million. Taken together it is obvious that this year as much as between £50 million and £55 million will be expended on beef coupons and imported cheese. I believe that the manning-up of the British police should have a larger pull on our national resources than these two items, and I hope that the Minister in her reply will say why, in her opinion, it is more important to carry on a subsidy on imported French cheese than it is to re-establish the Metropolitan Police Force to the level it needs to occupy.

8.54 p.m.

Mr. Tom Litterick: One of the advantages of speaking late in a debate is that many of the things one would have liked to say have already been said, and I shall not bore the House by repeating them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) made a forceful point about complaints by the public against the police. He feels that the police should be subject to independent scrutiny, and I, too, believe that the police would benefit from such a course in the long run. I wish to emphasise the importance of not differentiating between the police and the rest of society. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Montgomery) took up that point.
If, as has been done in much of Central and Latin America, Asia and, indeed, some parts of Europe, we make the mistake of creating the police as a recognisably separate group, we create the danger of alienation between the community and the police. So far we have not made this mistake but, as other hon. Members have said, we have placed increasing burdens on the police, burdens which involve the police intruding into the lives of citizens in ways which they have not used before and ways which are likely to provoke resentment. This emphasises the need for independent examination of police action in the event of complaints.
I can narrow this down further and point out to the House that there is a sense in which we treat the police differently from most people in society. This dates from a period just after the First World War. Policemen are workers, like everyone else who works for a salary or a wage. But they are not given the same rights as most people who work for their living. They were significantly deprived of their rights in the few years immediately following the First World War, when I understand that the frightened politicians of that time thought that the Russians were coming or something like that. It seems that nothing changes. So the police were deprived of the right of free choice in the matter of trade union membership. Indeed, they were deprived of the right of trade union membership. They were also deprived of the right to freedom of action which is enjoyed by the generality of workers and particularly by trade union members in this country.
The particular legislation which was enacted rather more than 50 years ago was enacted in the heat of and under the pressure of a particular time, and it emphasises the moral that the sort of thing that we did the week before last is never well advised. Legislation should never be passed under pressure of any sort. The interesting point is that, like most temporary bits of legislation, the legislation governing the rights of the policeman is still with us and still denying to the police what I would call their natural rights or, if one does not care for that phrase, at least parity of rights with the rest of the community.
Most speakers in the debate have said that policemen are highly responsible people and that their job is highly demanding. These things have been said quite properly and correctly in my view, in that they characterise the policeman's job accurately. If, however, the policeman's job is such a job that it demands these special qualities—qualities of mind, responsibility, sophistication, adaptability, ability to handle people and the ability to make value judgments quickly, and so on—how is it that people who are hired to do that kind of responsible work are not deemed officially by the State to be sufficiently responsible to choose their own trade union?
A policeman is not allowed to join a trade union. He is allowed to join an association, but even then he is denied choice. He is told—if I may paraphrase the late Henry Ford—"You can have any association you like so long as it is the Police Federation". I am sure that most hon. Members appreciate that this is really a throwback to a paternalistic age, to a time when, for example, chief constables were usually idiots who had never worked in the police force before they were appointed as chief constables. That was a time when it was customary to retire into the police forces regimental commanders who treated policemen as if they were regimental nobodies. Much of this tradition hangs on, but it is fair to say that most of the senior police officers today are very different people. They are much more sophisticated in both a managerial and a leadership sense.
But the structure of the system has not changed in this respect. We still deny policemen the simple basic rights. I hope that hon. Members will not misunderstand me. I refer to all the rights possessed by other people who work for their living— the right to join a trade union and do all the things that trade union membership and free collective association with one's fellow workers mean.
That would mean, incidentally the elimination of the rather patronising attitude, expressed, no doubt with good intentions, in the House about what we shall do, for example, about policemen's wages. We should bear this point in mind. The men who do this work are not to be patronised. They do their work for society and in many cases risk their lives


for us, and they should not be treated like children. They should be accorded the rights of freedom of association and freedom of representation enjoyed by everybody else. A free society can afford to give its policemen equal rights.

9.1 p.m.

Mr. Michael Mates: I wish to make two brief points about the terrorist trend in this country, but first I must take up a point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Litterick) who was, I think, advocating the introduction of a trade union system into the police force. He said that the police force was the only part of society that does not have such a system, but I have spent time in the Services and I can state that we did not have such a system there. Indeed, it would be a sad day if bodies that are able to carry out their work in society on the basis of their inbred discipline, loyalty and esprit de corps, were to have all that eroded, as has happened in other organisations of a Service nature in European countries, very much to the disadvantage—

Mr. Litterick: I am certain that I did not suggest that all other occupational groups in society enjoy the rights of which I was speaking. I am painfully aware that they do not. It might be more appropriate if the hon. Gentleman and myself were, on another occasion, in the context of a different debate, to take up the question of trade union rights for members of the Armed Forces. I would be willing to take issue with him on that subject, but in the meantime I point out that the police are not a military force.

Mr. Mates: I shall leave that point, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, to another occasion. But what the hon. Gentleman suggested in his speech would be a retrograde step in any organisation in this country that provides a service which requires discipline from within its own ranks.
I turn to two points regarding the present terrorist problem. First, I urge the Government most strongly to take more definite steps over the knotty question of the extradition of terrorists who seek refuge in the Republic of Ireland. For far too long Governments have taken a soft line on this. If stronger action were taken now it would be a tremendous help to our police forces in combating

terrorism in this country and in Northern Ireland. We welcome the steps taken by the Irish Government 10 days ago in announcing plans for the trials of criminals in countries other than where offences have been committed, but this does not go far enough.
I join in the praise that has been lavished on the police for their splendid work in the past few weeks, and for their courage, devotion and detective skill, which has resulted in 15 or 20 people being arrested and charged in connection with the bomb outrages in Birmingham and Guildford. It is a horrifying thought that had those people managed to get into the Republic of Ireland they could now be sitting there feeling completely safe and there would be nothing that we could do about it. With the increase of such outrages in this country, it is becoming daily more unacceptable that this state of affairs should continue and that a foreign nation which alleges that it is in friendly agreement with us, and which in many cases seeks most-favoured-nation treatment, should continue to drag its heels on this most important matter.
The second point which I want to raise is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) said, one which I raised in my maiden speech. It concerns the introduction of identity cards. At the end of the anti-terrorism debate the Home Secretary was kind enough to say that, partly because of what I had said, he would keep an open mind and examine the question. I have written to him and have sent him a specimen identity card. I have looked into the whole question in the 10 days which have elapsed since the passage of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act.
It is now clear that a simple, cheap and effective card of indentification could be produced that would be virtually unforgeable. I have a couple of specimens which at the end of the debate I will put into the Library so that Members may look at them. There is a system whereby a photograph and a fingerprint can be etched on. I stress that it is the fingerprint that is crucial as regards identification. It is difficult, if not impossible, either to replace or to deface the photograph that has been so etched on.
The adoption of such a measure would assist the police in their control of movement between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland and Great Britain. It could be made so simple and so effective that I strongly commend it to the Government. With an embossed name and means of identification, very quick checks could be made at ports, just as anybody who takes a credit card into a restaurant can very quickly have the details on that card recorded. It is simple and effective. It would not cause excessive delays. It would allow the police a very useful tool in checking on the movement of people into and out of this country.
The other day I said that this system should eventually be universal. I believe that it should, although I know that there will be some objections from people who consider that this is yet a further intrusion on personal liberty.
Having thought about this matter deeply, I offer a couple of constructive suggestions as to ways in which such a system would help us in our way of life in Britain. My mentioning these may help to overcome certain objections. For a long time Governments have been seeking a means of improving the lot of certain sectors of society—old-age pensioners, the disabled, students, and so on. It has been a great problem, because it has up till now been a question of providing more money and also a problem of not trying to treat such people in a patronising and charitable way.
If we had a national system of identification, and if everybody carried an identity card, how simple it would be to give a special one to, for example, old-age pensioners which they would carry as of right. It could be of a different colour. This would ease enormously the administrative problems of, for example, issuing beef tokens. It would ease enormously the problems of being able to do more for such people without necessarily incurring extra Government expenditure.
Why could not a pensioner with a red card travel free on trains outside rush hours, when the trains are going around the country half empty? There would be no administrative problems and no extra expense. A pensioner could travel with this symbol of his status in society. He could use trains and buses free at certain

times. Likewise, there could be another card for the registered disabled and yet another for students. All groups in society which need special treatment on special occasions could, as of right, get the support which they need in this manner easily, simply and without any great administrative machine.
I commend this proposal most strongly to the Government as a constructive idea which will help the police immeasurably. It is a measure of which no innocent person need have any fear, and at the same time it will give to other Government Departments real help in enabling them to do their best for the special sectors of society which need help.

9.10 p.m.

Mr. John Ryman: I should like to mentioned two topics which so far have not been touched upon. The first is the morale of the police. Anybody who is familiar with the work of the police today will know at once that morale amongst the men is very low indeed, at all levels. Morale in the metropolitan and county police forces is low because of a general sense of frustration. It has nothing to do with money. It is quite wrong, as was suggested by an hon. Member opposite, to suppose that money and an increase in manpower will cure the problems of the police. It will not.
Speak to any officer, whether he be a uniformed officer or a CID officer, and the reason for the frustration will become apparent immediately. It is because the whole weight of evidence, of rules of procedure, of sympathy and of public opinion is against the prosecution, and against police officers giving evidence. The whole system at the moment makes it very difficult successfully to prosecute a person whom everybody who is aware of the true facts of the case knows perfectly well is guilty. That, in certain cases, ultimately leads to degrees of police corruption. One has to face that fact. The present Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Robert Marks, has faced it and has said so again and again. The A10 Department is very active. It is concerned solely with investigating complaints against police officers.
Why are police officers frustrated? It is, first, because they are vastly overworked. The average case load for a CID officer in the Metropolitan area is


over 400 a year. In the country the figure is far smaller. When an officer gives evidence in court, or waits to give evidence, he cannot get on with his ordinary work, which piles up in his absence in his office. Given the fact that he may well be on night duty at various periods of the year, this adds to the strain.
The Labour Government who left office in 1970 had a very good record in passing a number of Acts of Parliament which made it a good deal easier for the police to carry out their duties efficiently and effectively. I refer to such measures as the Criminal Law Act 1967 and the Criminal Justice Act 1968, which, in effect, changed the rules of evidence in such a way as to make prosecutions of guilty persons much more effective.
I ask my hon. Friend who is to reply to the debate on behalf of the Government to say what the Government are doing now to deal with this very real sense of frustration by police officers. What is the Criminal Law Revision Committee doing on the question of the caution? The caution, in the opinion of many judges and people who practise in our criminal courts, is antiquated, and is an anachronism which has no place in modern criminal law. It encourages guilty men and sophisticated criminals to keep quiet and discourages innocent people from giving to an investigating officer an explanation at the first reasonable opportunity.
Morale is low. There is no getting away from it. No tolerant or pompous platitudes from well-meaning politicians exhorting police officers to work harder will cure it. The fact of the matter is— most senior police officers hold this view —that the calibre of man joining the police today is not as good as it used to be. Every officer who now has to deal with questions of recruitment and training will confirm this view. We no longer get the dedicated young man entering the police force. The calibre of man at levels higher than that is very good, but again and again one hears the view expressed —no doubt, each succeeding generation makes it—that the men coming into the force now are not as dedicated as they used to be and are not as hard working, and the reason is that they are utterly frustrated.
Police officers are frustrated at perverse verdicts by juries. They are frustrated at having to spend time in court day after day being cross-examined in a hostile and aggressive fashion. They are frustrated at having dirt flung in their faces in court, and at seeing guilty men get off scot free day after day because of some legal technicality.
I believe that to be the reason why police morale today is so low. Of course, the police would welcome extra money, and shorter hours, but the basic reason for their frustration is that they see their legitimate objective of pursuing criminals and prosecuting them to conviction defeated again and again.
It is noticeable now in the courts that when a prosecution rests entirely upon the evidence of police officers, with no evidence of an independent civilian kind —for example, the offence of living on immoral earnings, or something like that, when the case depends entirely on the observations of police officers—time and again guilty men get off scot free because public confidence in the police as shown by juries throughout the land has diminished.
That is one aspect of the matter with which I want the Minister to deal tonight, because it seems to me that no sensible proposal has yet come from the Government to deal with the intense frustration among police officers.
The other matters to which I now turn —it has already been mentioned—is the present thoroughly unsatisfactory system for internal discipline. It is unfair to the men and women in the force, and to the public. Anyone who has been present at a disciplinary hearing concerning a police officer will appreciate at once that the proceedings are more akin to those of the Court of Star Chamber in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries than to the proceedings in a modern court room. All the rules of fairness and of evidence are ignored. Anything goes.
When an individual police officer is under investigation by a disciplinary tribunal, by an investigating officer, or by a Home Office inspector of constabulary, the procedure is totally unfair. I go so far as to suggest that the officer concerned—man or woman—stands no chance. This is a serious matter because if the officer is convicted he or she loses


all pension rights, although the offence falls far short of a criminal offence. When, on the other hand, a criminal seeks to throw a police officer off the trail, a favourite way of going about it is simply to make a complaint about the behaviour of a police officer, when an investigation has to take place and the officer concerned is subjected to this thoroughly unfair procedure.
How do we strike the happy medium of, on the one hand, protecting the interests of the public and, on the other, maintaining good discipline and ensuring that there is no corruption? The Government must come up with some ideas in this connection, but at this stage I respectfully suggest that one of the causes is the immense size of our police forces now. In my opinion, the police amalgamations which resulted in the creation of huge forces throughout the country was a great mistake. That has happened now, however, and I do not for a moment suppose that the Government will reverse it. However, we must introduce some sensible safeguards in dealing with cases in which a complaint is made by a member of the public against a police officer, that complaint then being investigated through the thoroughly unsatisfactory procedure according to the Police Act 1964, under which one police force investigates another and no one has any confidence in the outcome of the inquiry.
I very much hope that we shall hear from the Government on those two important matters of morale and discipline.

9.20 p.m.

Mr. Mark Carlisle: I had not intended to speak when I came into the Chamber, until I listened to the Home Secretary. But first may I say two things to the hon. Member for Blyth (Mr. Ryman)? He said that he was the first to have mentioned police morale tonight and said that it was lower than it had ever been. Had he been here at the beginning of the debate he would have heard the Home Secretary say that in his opinion police morale was higher than it had ever been. When the hon. Member says that "a torrent of pompous platitudes" are of no use to the police morale, therefore, he should direct his remarks to the Home Secretary.
I do not believe that the hon. Member helps the police force by saying that the calibre of men joining today is lower than it has ever been. That is directly contrary to my impression while in the Home Office. He does no good either by making widespread and totally unjustified attacks on the police disciplinary procedure. Unfortunately, it is a necessary part of a disciplined force. I welcome the hon. Member's comments about the Criminal Law Revision Committee Report. I only wish that I had had some support from other lawyers in the House, particularly Labour lawyers, when as Minister I had to introduce a debate on the report shortly after its publication. At that time I found singularly little support of any kind from Labour Members for it.
I welcome the general cross-bench agreement which has come up in the debate. I find it slightly ironic, as my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Montgomery) pointed out and as the Home Secretary will remember, although he was in no way responsible at the time, that in June 1973, against a background of two years of good police recruiting, we faced a motion of censure on police manpower. I welcome very much the more bipartisan approach which has coloured the debate this evening.
Although I welcomed the terms and phrases that the Home Secretary used in his speech I found some of his facts and figures rather more depressing than he seemed to regard them. First—and I know that the Home Secretary will share this view—we are debating this subject against an alarming turn-round in the crime figures. I accept, as he said, that the decrease in 1973 really started in 1972 and that by the end of 1973 the figures were already on the upswing again.
But the figures mentioned by the Home Secretary can only fill the House with alarm when apparently in the first six months of this year we are back to a rate of increase in crime which I believe has not been equalled since the 1950s, whereas throughout the 1960s and early 1970s we witnessed a steady drop in the rate of increase. Maybe one day we shall be able to debate the causes of this disturbing trend which appears to have changed rapidly over the last 12 months.
I still believe that the greatest deterrent to crime is the likelihood of being caught,


which means and requires the strongest possible police force. When I said that I found the Home Secretary's figures somewhat disappointing I hope he will not think me unfair in pointing out, if I understood him correctly, that when he said that in 1974, although recruitment had not been as good as in 1973, we were at least still getting an increase. He ignored the fact that the year 1973 was itself considerably worse than 1972 and was worse than 1971, and therefore the 1973 figures start from a fairly low level. Although I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said about recruitment in recent months, we should not in any way be complacent or fail to realise that the trend at the moment is down rather than up. It is equally clear that the areas of severe police shortage are also the areas of the highest rate of crime.
Now that the Police Federation has come out in support of a differential pay rate for the Metropolitan area, I welcome what the Home Secretary said about the increase in the London weighting allowance. We must realise that policing in the Metropolitan area is in many ways a considerably different task today from policing in the county areas, particularly with the volume of work imposed by demonstrations and so on upon the police in the metropolitan area. A policeman of the City of London told me today that the more specialist forces there now are— bomb squads, fraud squads, cheque squads and so on—the greater the drain on the men who do the beat work. Thus the hours the average policeman must serve become longer and longer.
I know that the Home Secretary was short of time, but I was disappointed that he said nothing about the position of the Special Constabulary. I realise that the Police Federation has always been rather dubious about the Special Constabulary. But I think I am correct in saying that in 1972 the Police Federation was persuaded for the first time to go along with a motion from the Police Council which called upon chief constables to encourage the recruitment of more members of the Special Constabulary. We should be making an all-out drive for more special constables.
Rather than decry, as some of us in all parties tend to do, what appears to be the phenomenon of the build-up of private armies, we should apply our

minds to channelling the desire of people to do something to help support authority into the Special Constabulary, rather than into any third force. There is a possibility of increasing the number of special constables, and I hope that we shall hear something about it from the Minister.
Much has been done. The Home Secretary said that when he returned to the Home Office the police force was better in numbers, equipment and morale than when he left. As someone who was involved for three and a half years of that seven-year period in the Home Office, I accept the compliment to the stewardship of the police side of the Home Office during the right hon. Gentleman's absence. I, too, believe that the police force is better in numbers and is better equipped. Unlike the right hon. Gentleman's hon. Friend the Member for Blyth, I believe that morale is also higher.
But more needs to be done. I welcome the Home Secretary's statement that no cuts in Government expenditure are likely to affect police recruiting. There should be a clear statement from the House to the Police Federation that we need more recruits and more specials, and that if we went all out in a recruiting drive for special constables that would not be used to curtail our demand for more regulars, because we need more of both.

9.28 p.m.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence: My 13 years of almost constant practice in criminal courts have given me enormous respect for the police forces in Great Britain. I trust that I shall not be blamed if in a two-minute speech I do not spend time in allying myself with the praise hon. Members have heaped on the police in this admirable debate. Likewise, I wholeheartedly agree with all those who have demanded an increase in expenditure to bring the police establishment up to full strength. I go further and say that the defence of the realm from within is every bit as important as its defence from without, and that such internal defence should be given a much higher priority in the Treasury's scale.
As my one, small, and very short contribution to this important debate, I should like to make a point about police confidence. It is the other side of the coin shown to the House by the hon.


Member for Blyth (Mr. Ryman) when dealing with police frustration. Can the Minister give us the latest figures for the rate of acquittal of those who have pleaded not guilty and have been tried before a jury in recent months? It would be heartening to hear that the figures have improved on those given in March 1972, when we learnt that almost half of those who pleaded not guilty before a jury were acquitted. That meant either that a large number of innocent men and women were being subjected to the humiliation and degradation of a criminal trial on a false accusation, or that too many guilty people were being acquitted. Whichever is the true position, there is considerable room for improvement in a system which is so grossly inefficient.

Mr. Ryman: rose—

Mr. Lawrence: No, I have only half a minute. As I am an admirer of the police force I am always saddened to see juries acquitting in serious cases in which they do not believe the evidence of police witnesses. This lack of confidence turns so frequently upon the so-called "verbal", the alleged admission of guilt to a police officer, often in unlikely circumstances. Frequently that is the only evidence against an accused person.
I believe that the rules for police interrogation are out of date. The Judges' Rules are out of date. The concept of the right of silence is also outdated and an unrealistic feature of our present system of criminal trials. I believe that we waste our constructive energies in trying to justify this anachronistic relic of a bygone age.
However, hand in hand with that approach should be a realisation that there is one sure way in which the police can increase the confidence reposed in them by British juries and increase, incidentally, the rate of convicting the guilty. If conversations with suspects in the interrogation rooms of police stations were tape recorded, such conversations not to be admissible in evidence unless they were corroborated by an authenticated tape recording of the police officer's evidence, such evidence would be less frequently open to criticism. Not only would public confidence in the word of the police increase but the moral and recruitment of

police officers would rise and crime would be easier to fight.
I earnestly ask the police authorities to give renewed consideration to the now mature proposal that I have put forward. I ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department to set up an inquiry into the technical and practical feasibility of tape recording confessions.

9.32 p.m.

Mr. Norman Fowler: This has been a valuable debate. There have been substantial contributions from both sides of the House, not least the speedy speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence). First, I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Montgomery) on what I understand to be his third maiden speech. I also welcome the news that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) is to resume his former role as adviser to the Police Federation.
During the debate there has been agreement that the police face a serious if not a critical position. That stems partly from the ever-increasing demands which we as a country are putting on the police service. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) said, crime is currently increasing. In the first six months of this year there was a rise of 20 per cent. That is one of the most disturbing increases that we have seen since the war. At the same time we have seen new forms of crime such as the terrorist outrages over the past few months.
Such is the present burden of crime that men in the CID and in specialist sections such as the Bomb Squad and the Special Branch are working round the clock so that the threat can be checked. At a time when society has been put at risk, it is right to stress the debt that we owe to policemen. As a Birmingham Member, I know that we owe not least part of that debt to the dedicated work being carried out by the Special Branch. But it is not only the CID but the uniformed branch that is stretched to capacity.
The police have an obligation to preserve public order. As the Secretary of State for the Home Department said, they have to deal in London alone with between 400 and 500 major events. Many


of these events are weekend demonstrations which necessarily eat into a policeman's rest time. Few would doubt that this is a difficult time for the police. The demands have never been greater, yet it is precisely at this time that the service has run into severe undermanning difficulties.
We must be careful not to overstate the difficulties, but there is one chief constable who compares the present situation with that of the late 1950s. He is advocating the establishment of a new Royal Commission. Of all the problems which the service faces, the most serious is the number of experienced men who are resigning. There is the problem of wastage to which my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale referred.
In 1971 and 1972 there was a welcome increase—a net gain of almost 6,000 policemen. That was doubly welcome coming, as it did, after the lean years at the end of the 1960s. Last year was not so good. In London the numbers recruited went down and the numbers of men resigning from the service went up. The result was the worst wastage figure for 18 years.
I echo what was said by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Runcorn about the figures for this year. Frankly, a net gain of 448 does not seem particularly encouraging. It is the worst figure since 1968, and London is still losing men.
The London position is worth emphasising. Inside the general problem of wastage there is the special problem of the shortage of police in some of our big cities. The police tend to face the greatest difficulties and the widest range of problems in our big cities. Crime is often more organised. The terrorist often takes advantage of the city. Demonstrations tend to be more frequent. Yet it is in the big city that the police are so overstretched.
The Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police has, as he always does, eloquently made out the case for London. Of course, he is right. But I urge upon the Minister that other cities in Britain are affected.
The number of policemen compared with population in London is in the ratio of 1 of 373; in the West Midlands, based on Birmingham, it is 1 to 534; and in Greater Manchester it is 1 to 489.
This problem is in no sense confined to Britain. The same is happening in other European countries. For example, in Paris it is practically impossible to recruit men locally, so they are drafted in. But France has a national police force so that is possible. We rely, I think rightly, on local forces attracting their own recruits.
It is difficult to see how we are to recruit without some effective additional payment for the police in our big cities. I must tell the Home Secretary frankly that I am not sure that the present London allowance that he has announced will be sufficient to attract recruits into the Metropolitan Police in the numbers that we want.
It is right that we must tackle the general problem of wastage. As the Chief Constable of Hampshire pointed out, there is a police shortage not only in the capital and in our big cities but in county forces. Our whole service is in urgent need of strengthening, and I do not think that fact has been seriously challenged in the debate tonight.
A number of valuable suggestions have been made during the debate. I should like to underline some and add one or two of my own.
We welcome what the Home Secretary said about reducing the recruiting age to 18. We appreciate the importance of the Home Secretary carrying the service with him in this change.
We also endorse what the right hon. Gentleman said about the cadet service. That scheme provides an outstanding method of recruitment. On average, the cadet is better educated and, more important, stays in the service longer. Previously the guidance given was that forces should not exceed a bracket of between 30 per cent. and 40 per cent. of annual intake composed of cadets. Clearly there are advantages of having men with experience outside. I hope that this policy guide does not mean that we are turning potential cadets away, for it would be possible to give cadets experience of outside life by community service, which is already done, and by attachment in industry. At the same time, we agree that new efforts should be made to recruit men in their twenties and early thirties.
I hope that the Home Office will take very seriously the point made by the


Expenditure Committee, that one way to recruit such men might be to increase the recruiting budget that is made available. The Committee pointed out that it was ludicrous that the Ministry of Defence should spend about £15 million a year on recruiting while the Home Office spends only £682,000 a year. That is particularly ludicrous in view of the Government's policy on defence.
I think that we need to do more than recruit. We need to keep men in the service. Here we very much welcome what the Home Secretary has said about the review of the police pay structure and we urge that that review be completed as speedily as possible.
Above all, I believe that we must pay for experience. Most policemen remain police constables for the rest of their careers, but the trouble with the police pay structure is that the police constable reaches virtually the top of his pay scale relatively early in his service and then continues on an approximate plateau. Likewise, the figures also show that there are too many men retiring after 25 years in the service rather than going on for a further five years to the full pension age. Again I think that the Expenditure Committee has made a valuable contribution in its suggestion that a bounty should be paid at the end of the 30-year period.
I do not believe that the solution is just a question of pay or of financial incentives. It involves also the status of the policeman himself. It means that he should be recognised and treated as the skilled professional that he is, and that has implications for us all. It means, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds pointed out, that we do not as a Parliament find extra duties for the policeman simply because we can think of no one else who can do the job. Indeed, the time may well come when we should examine police duties to see which of them can be taken away.
It means that the public must not make unreasonable demands on the police services. I give just one example. In this country there is the right of peaceful demonstration and that no one wants to see removed in any way. However it is reasonable that the people who demonstrate should give reasonable notice of their intention to do so. Many do so,

but many others do not and the effect is not only to eat into the policeman's weekend yet again, at very short notice, and to disrupt his personal life, but that the threat of disorder is very much greater because of the speed at which arrangements have to be made.
It also places upon us a responsibility to find solutions to problems that are at present being contained only by making extra demands on the police. One of the most depressing comments of the Chief Inspector of Constabulary in his report this year was that a strong police presence in and around football grounds, often at the expense of other pressing duties, had become necessary. It is ludicrous that, at a time when the country faces real threats, aimed at the breakdown of society itself, scarce police manpower has to be diverted to guard football grounds.
The Opposition do not suggest that there is any sudden panacea. We believe that the kind of policies that we have put forward would certainly help. However, we recognise that these policies will take time and that by then new demands may be evident. It is for that reason that we urge that the Home Secretary should take note of what my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Run-corn said about the Special Constabulary. The Home Secretary did not mention that subject during his speech and the omission was conspicuous. Special constables could usefully supplement the work of the regular police force. Of course the regular police force must have the main burden placed upon it, but there is certainly room to expand the Special Constabulary.
The standards of dedication and devotion to duty of the police services are second to none among the public services in Britain today. They have a difficult, delicate and sometimes dangerous job. Their role is already appreciated by the public. I have always believed that one of the effects of an independent review will be that it will demonstrate even to the doubters the high standards in the police service.
We now have a very young police service. Half of the serving policemen are under 30. It must be our aim to provide the conditions that will make the


police career satisfying and a career that those men will want to continue.

9.45 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Dr. Shirley Summer-skill): This evening's debate has covered a wide field, but despite the large number of points that have been raised it seems to me that several clear themes have emerged. It has become clear how fully hon. Members on both sides of the House appreciate the burdens that are placed upon the police. Hon. Members in this House make laws, and it is right that we should be aware of what it is we ask of those on whom we place the primary responsibility for enforcing those laws.
We have, as has been noted this evening, recently added considerably to the duties of the police by enacting certain measures against terrorists. These extra duties have willingly been shouldered. All ranks of the service readily respond to every new responsibility, even when it involves heavy extra hours of duty and risks to their personal safety. The House has rightly expressed its admiration and gratitude to the police, and I know that it gives its fullest support to the immense tasks they are carrying out.
When he spoke at the start of the debate my right hon. Friend emphasised the steps the Government have taken to foster the interests of the police and the importance they attach to having a strong police service with a high morale. I should like to remind the House again, without being in any way complacent, that, as my right hon. Friend said, to give but one example, the increases given to a newly-appointed constable in September were more than 20 per cent. Additionally there were threshold and other increases, for instance those designed to help long-serving constables and all officers in London. It is hoped that the full effects of the increases have not yet wholly revealed themselves in an increase in the recruitment figures.
The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Montgomery) mentioned the London allowance. I can tell him that in the light of the increased allowance the Commissioner is trying to reduce compulsory rest-day working. Working on rest days is as much of a problem as pay. The cash position might, in the event, not be very different, but the

man has another day off, so his conditions have been improved. The London allowance was backdated to 1st April and was additional to a substantial increase from 1st September.
The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the problem of wastage. To some extent the recent loss from wastage has been inevitable because of the relatively large number of immediate post-war entrants reaching retirement age, but the rise in premature wastage, that is, those leaving without pension, is a matter of considerable concern. The subject has been studied extensively for a number of years. The causes of wastage remain rather elusive, in the sense that it is not always easy to identify individual factors that cause it or the steps that need to be taken to remedy it. Pay is, of course, a factor, though it has not been possible to quantify its effect. I assure the hon. Gentleman and the House that efforts are continually being made to study the causes of wastage, to identify the factors that appear to be relevant, and to take steps to deal with them.
I have noted carefully the interesting suggestions and comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) about unequal sentences, delays in the hearing of cases by magistrates' courts, the recruitment of school leavers, and liaison between local authorities and police forces.
The hon. Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) gave the House the benefit of his personal experience both as a member of the Special Constabulary and as the subject of a Special Branch inquiry. I assure him—I know that here I speak for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary—that the Government strongly support chief officers in their efforts to maintain an active, efficient and strong Special Constabulary, and I hope that the House will recognise that the Home Office is doing everything possible to strengthen it.
The members of the Police Advisory Board Working Party which is to review the employment and conditions of service of special constables have been appointed, except for the special constables themselves, because this working party differs from most exercises of this kind in that arrangements are being made for them to be represented. It has taken some time to set up a representative committee to


ensure that they are properly represented, but it is being done as soon as possible.
The level of advertisement revenue admittedly was lower than in the first year, but the first year included an element for preliminary research. However, the amount of advertising was as high as it was during the first year.
I hope that the Special Constabulary will continue to play an important role in support of the regular police.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) made a spirited speech, in which he dealt with a number of different subjects. However, the main part of it concerned the Special Branch. There are many misconceptions about the Special Branch. Perhaps I can dispose of a few of them. I assure the House that Special Branch officers are police officers and are responsible, through their senior officers, to their chief officers of police. There is no national special branch. Special branch work is a normal part of police duty.
As well as being under the control of their chief officers of police, Special Branch officers, as with all police officers, are subject to the police discipline code and to the law. It is fully recognised in the police service that members of the Special Branch should concern themselves in industrial disputes no more than is necessary for the maintenance of law and order and for the acquisition of any necessary intelligence on any subversive background to disputes. The Home Secretary has recently caused chief officers of police to be reminded of this principle and of the importance of ensuring that police forces do not pass on information deriving from official sources to trade unions, firms or employers' organisations.
On the question of infiltration of trade unions, members of the Special Branch are interested not in trade unions as such but only in such activities of individuals within trade unions as are relevant to the proper function of special branches. The same applies to Special Branch interest in any other organisation. I refer my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East, for further information on some of the detailed examples he gave, to the lengthy question and answer session in which my right hon. Friend

the Home Secretary took part on 20th June.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Litterick) raised the point about a policeman not being able to join a trade union. We have not received any representations from the Police Federation on this matter. In fact, the conference of the Police Federation recently rejected the idea that the police should have the right to strike.
During the last Parliament but one the right hon. Member for Carshalton (Mr. Carr) declared himself in favour of the introduction of an independent element into the complaints procedure. That is a principle which my right hon. Friend equally accepts and from which I believe there is now little or no dissent in the House.
What my right hon. Friend has put forward is in no sense a cut-and-dried scheme but is intended as a basis for consultations with the police service and police authorities, and these are now going on. As he explained in Committee on the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Bill, he will need a few more months to complete these consultations and get the legislation into shape. After that he will want to introduce the legislation as quickly as he can, given the great pressure of Government legislation and the time available.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) asked about the Police Council Working Party. That was set up to deal mainly with police pay. The Police Advisory Board is the consultative body for matters other than pay and conditions of service. It met only once under the Conservative administration, but my right hon. Friend values the help of the board so much that he intends that it should meet more frequently while he is Home Secretary. A meeting was held in July this year and another will be held in January.
The hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler) mentioned the financing of the police. My right hon. Friend mentioned the rate support grant negotiations for an increase of 1,000 police officers, the 1,000 is not a limit; it is only an estimate of what can be achieved. If, happily, more recruits are forthcoming, the money will be available. As to housing, I assure the hon. Gentleman that


the Government are conscious of the need for an effective and progressive housing policy, and will do everything possible to improve housing for the police service.
We have heard a great deal in the debate about the rights of the individual citizen. My right hon. Friend quoted the founder of the Special Branch. The rights of the individual citizen are not a new problem, and I should like to quote Sir Robert Peel, the founder of the Metropolitan Police. He said:
It is difficult to reconcile an effective system of police with that perfect freedom of action and exemption from interference which are the great privileges and blessings of society in this country.
I remind my hon. Friends who are concerned about the rights of the individual citizen that it was a Labour Government which introduced the law which allows a citizen to sue the Government. It was a Labour Government which established the Parliamentary Commissioner. It was a Labour Government which legislated against racial discrimination and for equal pay, and will legislate against discrimination on grounds of sex.
The Government believe that respect for the law, however, must be firmly

based not only on the rights of the citizen but upon his or her obligations to the community. Alarmed as we all are at the growth of violence, we believe that law-abiding citizens are entitled to full protection.
The police must be strengthened and supported in the exercise of their function to uphold the rule of law. I am confident that my right hon. Friend is doing everything possible to achieve this through the progressive, practical policies he has outlined to the House tonight—policies which will help the police to tackle the many different and difficult problems which face them.

Mr. Joseph Harper (Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household): I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,

That the Education Bill may be proceeded with at this day's sitting, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Harper.]

FUEL AND ELECTRICITY (CONTROL)

10.0 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. John Smith): I beg to move,
That the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act 1973 (Continuation) Order 1974 (S.I., 1974, No. 1893), a copy of which was laid before this House on 20th November, be approved.
The Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act 1973, which the motion asks the House to continue, contains flexible and wide-ranging powers. Hitherto these powers have been used for two distinct purposes. Their main use—by the last Government in the winter of 1973–74—was for crisis management at a time of serious interruption in our energy supplies. Since that time the powers have been used on a limited scale for measures connected with the general management of energy resources. I shall describe these measures in more detail in a moment.
It is now clear that we need the powers in the Act for the introduction of a third category of measures—measures which are neither of a crisis nature nor, I think, of a kind that can be described as routine management of energy resources. I refer to the energy savings measures announced earlier today by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, some of which will require the use of the powers in the 1973 Act. Again, I shall say more about these in a moment.
The Order before the House extends for a period of one year, to 30th November 1975, the powers contained in Sections 1 to 8 of the Act. These powers enable control to be exercised over petroleum, substances derived from petroleum, any substances used as a fuel, and electricity. Thus, the controls extend not only to petroleum and electricity but also to coal and gas. As we have seen, the Act provides powers to introduce any emergency measures which might be necessary should our energy supplies be interrupted.
However, I can assure the House that the introduction of crisis measures is not the prime purpose of the Government in laying this order. For emergency situations the Act can quickly be revived by order. In any case, there is on the Government's part no present expectation of difficulties arising in the near future that

would require the Act to be invoked for crisis management purposes as it was last winter by the previous Government. If such need should arise, I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend would seek to make a statement to Parliament before the powers in the Act were used for crisis measures of, if the need were very immediate, at the very earliest opportunity thereafter.
I should like to describe briefly the main uses which are at present being made of the powers in the Act. One use is to relieve British Gas Corporation of certain supply obligations; another is to control the prices of petrol, paraffin and derv. The Gas Act 1972 imposes a statutory obligation on the British Gas Corporation in specific circumstances to supply gas on request. The need to provide some relief from this arises from changes in the world energy situation in the last year or so. During this period the demand for gas has greatly increased, particularly for commercial and industrial use.
It became clear early this year that, if the corporation had to meet in full every request for large new and additional gas supplies which fell within the terms of its statutory obligation, this would endanger the continuing security of supply to other users in the winters preceding the arrival of Frigg gas. Accordingly, on 25th March 1974, authority under Section 4 of the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act was given to the corporation to disregard this statutory obligation as respects new or additional supplies exceeding 25,000 therms per annum.
The authority does not affect any statutory obligation to continue to give a supply of whatever size to one who is already receiving it, nor does it affect any contractual obligation or interfere with the corporation's freedom to meet a new demand if it can do so without imperilling supplies to other consumers. The figure of 25,000 therms is about 25 times the consumption of a fair-sized domestic gas central heating installation. The great majority of the Corporation's industrial and commercial customers use less than that amount per annum.
Another power under the Act is the power to regulate oil product prices. It is important that these powers be retained in the light of the continuing uncertainty


of security of world supplies arising from the situation in the Middle East and from the increasing frequency of demands by all producers for higher prices of crude oils. At present the powers, which were introduced during the difficult supply situation last December, are exercised only over the maximum retail prices of petrol, derv and paraffin. We are keeping these controls under constant review so that they are exercised no longer than necessary.
A third use of the powers for general management of energy resources which we propose is to give directions to oil companies restricting disposal of oil stocks. These will be issued shortly. The need for this arises from our international obligations to hold minimum stock levels. The United Kingdom is obliged under the international energy programme and an EEC directive to hold certain minimum stocks of oil. Such stocks are an essential part of our security of supply but with the huge increases in the price of oil it is no longer practicable to rely on companies voluntarily holding high stocks.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The hon. Gentleman referred to an EEC directive. If I am not mistaken, that is the directive which was before the House a few days ago, which has not been approved and which it was understood would not be approved until the House had had a further opportunity of debate. Is that the case?

Mr. Smith: I assure the right hon. Gentleman that it is not the case. The directive to which I referred is the directive of 24th July 1973, the effect of which is that the United Kingdom should hold certain stocks of oil from 1st January 1975. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that this is quite a different matter from the matter that we were discussing, I think, last week.

Mr. Powell: I do not think so.

Mr. Smith: I assure the right hon. Gentleman that what I tell him is correct. He can pursue the matter later. I am surprised that he does not accept an assurance which I give with some confidence.
For the three measures I have described no other suitable powers exist at the present time, although consideration is

being given by the Government to taking alternative powers under other legislation.
I turn to the energy savings measures announced earlier today by my right hon. Friend. Some of these will require use of the powers in the 1973 Act. For example, the compulsory maximum limits on heating levels in buildings of 68 deg. Fahrenheit/20 deg. centigrade will require the exercise of the powers contained under Section 2(1) of the Act. The ban on the use of electricity for external display and advertising purposes in daylight hours will derive from the same powers. The reduction in maximum speed limits on single carriage-way roads to 50 m.p.h. and on dual carriageways other than motorways to 60 m.p.h. will be imposed by use of the powers in Section 4 of the Act.
The need for energy-saving measures was explained in some detail in the statement made today by my right hon. Friend and I am sure the House recognises that we all have a duty to avoid waste of energy in one form or another. To achieve the full saving required we cannot rely entirely on voluntary effort. The package therefore contains an element of compulsion in the three measures I have referred to. To back these measures the Government have decided to make use of the powers in the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act. Other than by invoking emergency powers, which would be totally inappropriate for this purpose, no suitable powers are readily available for these measures. This, then, is another reason for continuing the relevant provisions of the Act in force and for approving the order before the House.
To sum up, in the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act 1973 we have a flexible means of dealing with a variety of energy problems. I repeat that the Government do not see in present circumstances a need for the use of these powers for crisis measures, nor would they use the powers for this purpose without consulting the House at the earliest possible opportunity. But we need the powers now both for energy saving measures which require an element of compulsion and in order to maintain in force certain other measures of control for the management of our energy resources.
I therefore ask the House to approve the order.

10.9 p.m.

Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson: The Under-Secretary has told us of the importance of the Act. The announcement by his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State this afternoon, and the juxtaposition, therefore, of these two announcements on the same day, gives a new importance to our discussions this evening. Indeed, the Secretary of State told us this afternoon that the Act would be used to implement many of the recommendations, and although those recommendations are extremely slight and are little more than a considerable public relations exercise in our view, the fact remains that some action had been heralded in the Press, and in spite of the expectation with which many people waited for that announcement, their disappointment must be considerable. I do not think that it would be unfair to say that it is a question of closing the stable door after the horse is three times round the field. However, it is important—

The Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Eric Varley): As I said this afternoon, we are not so proud as to believe that this is the final answer to energy conservation measures. I hope that the hon. Gentleman in the course of his speech will tell us what we should do and what the Opposition would do, and how much further he thinks we can go.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: The Secretary of State is a member of the Government. It is for the Government—not the Opposition—to tell the country what to do, unless he would like us to change sides. It is important to remember the genesis of the Act. When the Act was introduced we were facing a severe crisis. The coal industry dispute was beginning at that time, and was having its effect, and we had uncertainties of oil delivery as a result of the Arab-Israeli war. The present Secretary of State for Energy said,
The long-term energy problem is of the utmost seriousness and the gravest significance for the future wellbeing of everyone in these islands. It is the problem of oil, which is cynically played down to some extent, again for political reasons. The long-term and short-term problems are being tangled together, as they were, for example, by the Prime Minister in his speech at Nelson last Thursday, when he wrongly referred to the combined effects of the action of the miners and the Arab States. There is no such combined effect".

Therefore, the Secretary of State was clear at that time that it was an oil problem. He was specific in his comments. As far as he was concerned the matter related to the problems revolving around the shortages and uncertainties of oil supplies. He also stated at that time
The crisis was bound to come. It was inherent in a situation in which the appetite for oil in the industrial nations was growing more and more insatiable while world inflation was convincing the oil producers of a simple economic fact—that oil was worth more untapped, underground than being shipped in tankers to Europe and Japan.
He further stated:
The policy for oil is essential. But more than that, we need a comprehensive fuel policy, to maximise fuel production here at home, to maximise efficiency in the use of fuel, and to cut out waste. This calls for some kind of coherent policy for public transport.…" —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th November 1973; Vol. 865, c. 49–55.]
I cannot quarrel with anything that the right hon. Gentleman then said. He likes to think that it was a good speech. Many of us took part in that debate, which was at a critical moment in the economy of the country. Why was it, having made such an excellent contribution in the debate, that the right hon. Gentleman, now as Secretary of State, has allowed the spring, the summer and even the autumn of this year to disappear without taking any action? He told us previously what was wrong. We knew that he was right. We all said the same thing, but now a whole year has been spent in doing nothing.
The Minister for Transport said on 28th March this year,
The regulations made last December introducing the general maximum speed of 50 mph on all roads not subject to lower limits were made without the need for specific parliamentary approval as a result of an Order in Council under the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act 1973…
Yet when the Government were in power earlier this year, they removed these limits. Indeed, it was the Minister for Transport who said at that time, they were
thus putting motorway speed limits back to where they were before the fuel crisis."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th March 1974; Vol. 871, c. 761–62.]
That implies, in my view, that the crisis was deemed to be over.

The Minister for Transport (Mr. Fred Mulley): The main consideration which I put to the House was that my predecessor had made it clear that the 50 mph overall limit was to be limited to the problem of the acute shortage of oil, not to the present problem that we have, which is one of cost. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that the 70 mph limit on motorways that I am retaining is wrong, perhaps he will say so clearly.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: I am making the point that the controls were removed at the beginning of this year, giving the impression to the general public that the crisis had disappeared. In fact we all know—the right hon. Gentleman knows— that that crisis has not only remained with us but is, perhaps, more frightening today than it was then, because it has clearly become part of our way of life. I do not want to misrepresent the right hon. Gentleman in any way. I was here to listen to his announcement this afternoon. However, there was no magic wand that could suddenly be waved, because this was a deep-seated and long-continuing crisis with which many of us may have to live for the foreseeable future.
It was, therefore, very surprising that this silence about the crisis lasted for so long. Some of us might be sufficiently suspicious to suggest that it had something to do with the forthcoming General Election. We remember the headline in the Daily Mail five days before polling day at the last General Election,
'Labour's Chilly Secret'. The Government plans to restrict oil consumption have been secretly shelved because of the election.
On the very same day Transport House, with its usual alacrity, issued a Press statement by the Secretary of State for Energy, part of which said,
To suggest that the Energy Conservation Advisory Council is being set up to deal with a winter programme of fuel saving is plain distortion.
I find that hard to square with the right hon. Gentleman's statement this afternoon, in which he said,
My Advisory Council on Energy Conservation has already produced a number of suggestions for the Government to consider, and its work will grow and develop over the months and years ahead. The measures and proposals I announce today, therefore, must be regarded as an interim package, which we intend to extend and reinforce in the future." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December 1974; Vol. 883, c. 28.]

The Government were well aware of this crisis for a long time. For various reasons of their own, they may have decided to suppress any action about it. We have had a shabby story of lofty words which have masked indecision, inaction and, I believe, political wheeling and dealing. It is only now that we are getting the beginnings of a glimmer of action from a Government who have known and hidden this problem from the people for far too long.
I believe that this Conservative Act of Parliament should remain on the statute book but the powers are enormously wide. As the Under-Secretary told us, they give the Government powers of an almost wartime severity. The hon. Gentleman referred briefly to the operation of Section 4, which relaxes the statutory or contractual obligations and he pointed out that these can be used and have been used. Will he give the House an indication of how many times Section 4(2)(a), (b) and (c) have been used, which paragraphs provide powers for the driving of motor vehicles without registration and other forms of certification?
Can the Under-Secretary explain why it is necessary to have these special price controls over and above the ordinary operation of the Price Code? After all, these controls and this Act were introduced at a time of acute shortage in garages to avoid profiteering by those who had supplies. Why is it now necessary, when the situation is so dramatically different, to continue with these additional price controls which are in many cases having a deleterious effect on the retail trade?
The Act, if it is to be useful, requires very clearly set objectives from the Government and it is those objectives which my hon. Friends and I find totally lacking. It is one thing to be cutting back and controlling without offering the real incentives which are necessary to create a situation which we believe is essential, namely the ultimate independence from imported oil, a situation in which one can make a real dent in the balance of payments problem.
The Secretary of State, when he gave us his statement this afternoon, said at the end that he could not possibly predict the exact savings which would flow from it. He said that if it were possible to save 10 per cent. that would be the


equivalent to £700 million off the balance of payments. But he did not say that it was possible to do this. We on this side of the House find it disturbing that, at a time like this, the Government are still hell-bent on nationalising those people who are doing the most difficult and important work for us, namely finding an alternative source of our energy in the North Sea, and introducing taxation legislation which may, unless it is very sensitively drafted, create a situation where people will be driven away from the area.
Where in this statement, which can be implemented by the Act of Parliament, are the encouragements to find new sources of energy to supplement the two fuels on which we are to a greater or lesser extent dependent, namely coal and oil? Where is the intent to get us into the big league of nuclear generation? I believe that we in Britain can solve the problems which face us today, daunting though they are. I believe, however, that it means that we must use our resources and skills to the full. Energy is the life blood of this country, and this Act of Parliament produces little more than a tourniquet. It lacks behind it the clear objectives of a Government determined to make us independent of those terrible high import bills which are crippling our whole economy.

10.23 p.m.

Mr. Bob Cryer: I give a guarded welcome to this renewal order. When I take it in conjunction with the Secretary of State's remarks this afternoon, I urge him to re-examine his powers under the Act whereby he intends to control advertising displays during daytime only. I am sure the Secretary of State is listening intently, as he always does to my strictures, and I hope he will not confine such restrictions to daylight hours only. One of the worst exhibits of a profligate society is the way in which energy is wasted on neon displays often into the early hours of the morning. It is something which we could well take in hand, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will consider extending the controls on which he is embarking.
The powers which this order extends are very wide, and I hope that when the Secretary of State is considering instituting price control he will consider a scheme

whereby people who live in rural areas and disabled drivers are exempt from any increases in prices which he may be forced to institute and that the price control scheme will involve some differentiation for these people.
May I ask about Section 4(2) of the Act? I accept that this is an Act which he has inherited and is using as a matter of convenience. I am not always happy that the executive should use old Acts as a measure of convenience and receive thereby much wider powers. I wonder why and in what circumstances he intends to dispense with the whole of the legislation which has been built up over many years to protect the standards of operation and maintenance of public service vehicles. I can understand and appreciate the need for energy conservation, but I should have thought that there ought to be greater emphasis on public transport rather than on individual and possibly wasteful motor vehicle transport. I should have thought, therefore, that it was the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that higher standards were maintained in public service vehicles. Here he has powers to reduce those standards and, indeed, to dispense with them entirely. I shall be most interested to hear my right hon. Friend's explanation.
To that end, I hope that the Secretary of State will not rely on a hotchpotch of old legislation, making it do for present circumstances, but will bring to the House his own legislation tailor-made for present needs.
If the Act, as the hon. Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson) said, has prevented profiteering in the past, that is one reason which commends it strongly to me, for if it prevented profiteering in the future as well that would be excellent and help forward one of the aims which, I am sure, the Labour Government have constantly in mind.
I am certain that we shall have to control our future use of energy. We no longer have an energy glut. When we have North Sea oil under our control for the benefit of the people not for the benefit of a tiny group of oil shareholders, we shall be able to use it not in the profligate fashion of the oil companies but for the benefit of the nation. To this end, we shall need controls. I, therefore, welcome the continuance of


the Act, though I have reservations about it and look forward to the Secretary of State's explanation.

10.26 p.m.

Mr. Peter Rost: I do not find it strange that we should be asked to renew the Act, but I find it extraordinary that the powers under the Act have not been used by the Government throughout this whole period. At a time when the balance of payments has continued to deteriorate, with the import of oil as a major element in that deterioration, it is extraordinary that the Government should have removed controls which provided some sort of restraint on energy consumption, and should have done so at a time when other countries were imposing an energy conservation programme. This is all the more surprising when those countries, such as France, Germany, America and Holland, have already managed to achieve savings of more than 15 per cent., and in some cases over 20 per cent., are wealthier than we are, yet we, the poorest, are the most wasteful of our energy resources.
I was appalled by the Secretary of State's statement this afternoon, after the big build-up which we had had for months about the major energy conservation programme which the Government would announce and the endless delays before the statement was finally delivered to Parliament. What measures covered by that statement could not have been announced at least six months ago? I have looked carefully through the right hon. Gentleman's statement and I find no item in his proposals which called for more than an afternoon's deliberation by his Department of lethargy.
The measures are not only inadequate but are too late. By this year, Britain could have saved about 10 per cent. of its energy consumption, which would have saved about £600 million on our balance of payments. All the Government needed to do was to apply their own policy and that already laid down by the previous Government as a positive programme for energy conservation. Instead, we have the hotch-potch of measures announced today, most of which are nothing but talk about measures in the future.
I am anxious to know from the Secretary of State why his Advisory Council on Energy Conservation, which was set up more than six months ago, had its first meeting only in October. What has it done to accelerate a programme of energy conservation? Why have we not had more positive measures even now to conserve energy?
Let me briefly go over one or two of the proposals presented to us today. At a time when a 10 per cent. saving of energy would yield £600 million, and a time when the Government are squandering hundreds of millions in unproductive areas of the economy, they are proposing a mere £3 million loan to help industry promote energy conservation projects.
There is also a proposal that there should be a 6 per cent. saving of energy in Government buildings. That is a minimal contribution which will have not even a psychological effect. What is the point of asking offices to lower their thermostats to 68 deg. F when the current normal level in most offices is 68 deg. to 70 deg. anyway?
There is also the Secretary of State's fifth proposal in this hotch-potch list that there will be urgent discussions with local authorities to encourage conservation. Why have these discussions not taken place before? I understand that they are only now opening up. What has the Department of Energy been doing all these months if the discussions are only now about to start?
There is also a proposal to improve thermal insulation standards, but even by doubling the level of the standards they will still be among the poorest in Europe. Even then they will apply only to new building. Why did the Government not bring in improvement grants, discretionary grants and tax allowances for thermal insulation months ago? This was something that the Secretary of State suggested many times before he took office. He said in the speech which has been quoted already, and which the right hon. Gentleman himself modestly admitted was such a good speech,
a comprehensive fuel policy … calls also for new building standards and higher levels of insulation.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th November 1973; Vol. 865, c. 55.]
Why has he not done more to encourage that?
Apart from the short-term measures where we could have applied sensible economies months ago, there is nothing in the package to tackle the medium- and long-term problems. There are proposals for discussions with management and industry and for a publicity campaign which will begin over the months ahead. Why was such a campaign not launched in the last few months? Why are the extraordinary controls on display and advertising during daylight hours not due to start until the New Year? Other countries have imposed restrictions already and have achieved substantial savings.
Naturally only a moderate degree of saving can be achieved in the short term. We have not even seen that. The Government have done absolutely nothing to promote medium- and long-term conservation. For example, what has happened to the Central Policy Review Staff programme on energy conservation which was published last June? What have the Government done about the excellent recommendations from the Rothschild "think-tank"? What action have the Government taken towards allowing the price mechanism to have its effect? What have the Government done over the EEC recommendations on energy conservation policy, published last June or July not in the form of directives but as strong recommendations? They were sensible recommendations, but the Government have done nothing about them.
What have the Government done to direct the Central Electricity Generating Board to recycle waste heat? Even now plans are going ahead for the construction of new oil- and coal-fired power stations with a thermal efficiency of only 33 per cent. to 35 per cent. and with no effort made to use waste heat for district heating or for any other purpose. There are still statutory restraints imposed on the on-site generation of electricity, which could be far more efficient and which is done in other parts of the world.
When we come to the nuclear programme I must quote from the Secretary of State's excellent speech of last November when he said of the nuclear programme and the CEGB:
There must be a complete re-examination of power station policy. There must be a

decision about nuclear reactors which will ensure the quickest possible advance towards electricity generation by nuclear power"— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th November 1973; Vol. 865, c. 55.]
I have not seen very much of that. Our nuclear programme is shameful compared with what is happening in France, where 50 per cent. nuclear power is expected by, I think, 1985; in Germany, with a similar programme; and the United States. Nothing in the proposals attempts to rectify the flagging coal production in this country. They only aggravate the problem and make it even more essential that the Government should have applied energy conservation programmes to save oil sooner than they have.
The Government have talked and not acted. They have shamefully wasted the country's resources. They have been disgracefully complacent. At a time when the country was waiting for a lead, and would have been ready to respond, we have a hotch-potch series of measures, and even the Secretary of State is not prepared to put a figure on the amount that will be saved.
The right hon. Gentleman should have acted months ago. There was nothing in the proposals that could not have been announced at least six months ago. Even now, the proposals are not effective enough to produce the sort of saving that other countries are already achieving, countries better placed than we are to finance oil imports.
It is time the Secretary of State became a little less complacent and got on with a policy that would make a contribution towards getting the country out of the economic mess that the Government are doing their best to get us into.

10.38 p.m.

Mr. James Lamond: The speech of the hon. Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson) was almost breath-taking in its impudence. He used the order as a means to rake over the embers of the last election, using what he seemed to assume was the impeccable background of the Daily Mail as his source of information about what was being concealed by the Labour Government to lull the electors into a false sense of security. He suggested that there was a deep-laid plot to bring in severe measures which we were afraid to reveal


to the electors. But he then complained that the measures we had been trying to conceal in case we lost votes were not severe enough.
Like his right hon. Friend the Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Jenkin), who appeared on television tonight, the hon. Gentleman refused to give any information about what the Opposition would have done in the present circumstances. He tried to answer an intervention by saying that it was the Government's duty to govern, and that they should tell us what should be done. That may be true, but there is also an obligation upon the Opposition to make clear their alternative policies if they are not satisfied with what the Government are doing.
At some stage I want to hear exactly what the Opposition propose that would achieve the savings that we all wish to see. Would they re-introduce rota working in factories as a fuel-saving measure? Would they reduce the temperature allowed in offices to 59 deg. F.? Would they reduce the speed limit on motorways to 40 mph or something of the sort? Perhaps that is the plan that they are afraid to reveal to us in case it rebounds on them at the coming election, whenever that may be.

Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson: The basis of our case is that a whole year has been wasted. Does the hon. Member for Old-ham, East (Mr. Lamond) not think that these measures should have been introduced at the beginning of the year and that we should not have allowed the spring, summer and autumn to go by without action being taken?

Mr. Lamond: My faith in the Opposition is not such that I can believe that they would have done anything of the kind, as they were so dilatory in taking action on anything else. For example, we had an attack towards the end of the speech of the hon. Member for New Forest about how we were making the fuel position more difficult by suggesting nationalisation of the oil companies. It was said that we should draft our tax legislation carefully in case we do anything which might disturb the basis on which the companies are proceeding.
I draw the attention of the House to the fact that the previous Tory Government

when in office were so careful about how they drafted tax legislation concerning the oil companies that they did not draft anything.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin: Quite untrue. Absolute rubbish.

Mr. Lamond: That is the record of the previous Tory Government, despite a report from the Public Accounts Committee which was produced quickly so that it might be presented to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Anthony Barber—now Lord Barber—to enable him to give the matter some consideration prior to his Budget. He did the Public Accounts Committee the honour of mentioning the matter in his Budget statement. He said that he had received the report and that it revealed disturbing matters concerning the oil companies. It was the unanimous view of the committee that tax dodging was involved. He said that he would take speedy action. Twelve months later the Chancellor made another appearance, and not one thing had been done about the matters that had been raised by the committee.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin: Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the matters to which he is referring were to have been introduced in Mr. Anthony Barber's next Budget, which for reasons of which we are all aware he was prevented from introducing at the beginning of this year? That was the intention.

Mr. Lamond: The then Chancellor had ample opportunity to take action on taxation matters which were costing the country £1,500 million in lost revenue. The present Government, who have been attacked viciously by the Opposition, have been taking action.

Mr. Rost: The hon. Member for Old-ham, East (Mr. Lamond) has referred to lost revenue of £1,500 million. Will he say how much oil was landed from the North Sea during the years of alleged delay?

Mr. Lamond: I am prepared to debate the whole matter. There was no revenue from the oil but the oil companies were building up considerable tax reserves to set against the future profits that they


would make. In the end that was recognised not only by the Public Accounts Committee but by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, without any dubiety or argument, to cost the British people £1,500 million in lost revenue. That was because of the manipulations that took place to ensure that the oil companies had tax losses to set against the tax which they would eventually have to pay. However, we can cheerfully let that matter rest, because this Labour Government were elected in good time to do something about it. I am sure that all my colleagues—Tory and Labour—on the Public Accounts Committee are glad that the change in Government took place in time for something to be done about it.
The hon. Member for New Forest ended his speech with a vicious attack on this legislation. That was rather surprising because, just before he launched that attack, he said that it was a piece of Tory legislation that we were seeking to renew. The allegations made by the hon. Gentleman, if true tonight, were true at the time that this legislation was introduced. Therefore, it is surprising that the hon. Gentleman should have supported it at that time.

10.46 p.m.

Mr. Wyn Roberts: The hon. Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Lamond) spoke of severe measures being necessary. I think that the Secretary of State for Energy announced some fairly severe measures this afternoon, but I am not convinced that he was thoroughly questioned on them. My speech is by way of a delayed question on the right hon. Gentleman's statement, but nevertheless pertinent to the order.
I particularly want to ask about the second of the Secretary of State's measures for conserving energy. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Government would use their powers to ensure that the next round of oil price increases bears more heavily on motor spirit than on other oil products.
I understand that of the total oil imports into this country, about one-fifth go into motor spirit. Does the right hon. Gentleman's statement mean that if oil prices generally go up by, say, X per cent., he intends to put up motor spirit by 5X per cent.? If so, bearing in mind that the last increase in oil prices was

about 8·5p per gallon, can we expect an increase in petrol prices of five times that, which would be 42·5p? There has been a great deal of talk about petrol at £1 a gallon. Are we in fact on the verge of facing that possibility?
This is only one bit of highly dubious speculation that I have put before the House, but the Financial Times has been indulging in other speculation. In an article on petrol prices on 13th November it said:
if the Government decided to make them"—
the oil companies—
put the full weight of this on petrol rather than other types of fuel such as heating oil or diesel oil, the increase could be 7p a gallon. Unlike the petrol revenue duty, which has remained constant at 22·5p a gallon, VAT increases automatically with any rise in pump prices. Thus the VAT at 25 per cent. will increase by one-quarter any price rises which the oil companies make.
As a result, petrol could go up by another 10p a gallon before Christmas.
It seems that the choice is anything between an increase of 10p a gallon or my speculative 42p a gallon. Which is it to be? After the right hon. Gentleman's statement this afternoon, we are entitled to know, because it affects the thinking of a great many people in this country.
I happen to be concerned with the prospects for the rural areas. I have already been approached by the Motor Agents Association, which tells me that small petrol stations in the rural areas will be knocked out of business altogether. I am particularly concerned about that aspect of the matter, but surely, especially these days, we are all concerned about the car industry, and the likely increase in petrol prices, whatever it may be, will certainly have a tremendous effect on car manufacturing in this country.
I end with another quotation from the same edition of the Financial Times:
The average motorist, driving 10,000 a year with a car such as a Cortina which returns 25 mpg, will find Mr. Healey's measures adding £34 a year to his costs. The oil companies' increases, if granted, will add another £40 to that. And, if he does not reduce his annual mileage, motoring in 1975 will cost him £288 in petrol alone, £144 more than in 1973.
This was meant to be a supplementary question to follow the right hon. Gentleman's statement this afternoon and I am


grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to put it at such length.

10.52 p.m.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: I intervene in the debate because, like the hon. Member for Conway (Mr. Roberts), I did not have the opportunity to question my right hon. Friend when he made his statement this afternoon on energy conservation. I took especial note to see who was called, and I saw that on my side of the House the emphasis was on those who are known to be extremist in these matters—[HON. MEMBERS: "And the Common Market? "] On matters such as the Common Market I am very much a moderate.
I should first like to deal with the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost)—or is it for The Hague? He remembers The Hague very well and remembers the company he kept on that occasion, but there will be other occasions nearer the next election to go into that matter. What astounds me is that the hon. Member should have the audacity to talk about energy saving.
I recall a right hon. Gentleman opposite, who was then in a fairly prominent position—I think that he was Prime Minister at the time and he is certainly very much the Leader of the Opposition now—at any rate, he is one of the Opposition leaders—being involved in a peculiar affair connected with fuel saving. Rumour has it that he got as far as the bottom of Whitehall and then got involved in a traffic jam. So incensed was the then Prime Minister and so little concerned was he with saving energy that he telephoned Tokyo to ensure that he had the privilege of going the extra 150 yards from the bottom of Whitehall to Downing Street. Now the Opposition have the cheek and audacity to talk about energy saving.

Mr. James Lamond: My hon. Friend is not entirely fair, because the suggestions by hon. Members opposite included cleaning one's teeth in the dark, which might have compensated for the energy used in the incident of which my hon. Friend is speaking.

Mr. Skinner: That suggestion landed the right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Jenkin), who is lying fast

asleep on the Front Bench, in serious trouble, and cohorts of journalists ran to his house complete with their cameras.

Mr. Patrick Jenkin: I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. Would he comment on the fact that, although it took me only two days to go on television and apologise to the public for having made a boob, it has taken the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State nine months to come up with a proper energy-saving programme?

Mr. Skinner: I watch the television avidly, and I cannot remember the right hon. Gentleman apologising for everything that he did. One of the characteristics of the Conservative Government was their complete and utter obstinacy on almost every issue, particularly the Common Market. I think that I carry the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) with me when I say that.
Can you recall, Mr. Deputy Speaker, before you were in the inflated position that you now occupy—

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Surely the hon. Gentleman is being discourteous to the Chair. I hope he will withdraw what he said.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): I think that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) was looking for a complimentary term but could not find one.

Mr. Skinner: What I said was meant in the nicest possible way, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I hope you will regard the matter as frivolous. I hope, further, that when I want to take the opportunity of making a few more points on other occasions when you are in the Chair you will remember that any remarks I make about you will to all intents and purposes be extremely complimentary.
Just after the order that we are renewing tonight was originally brought into effect, the then Prime Minister toured the country in an aeroplane, making about seven trips in all. Those were in the halcyon days of Court Line. One notices that the Liberal Party is not represented here tonight. Liberal Members have something to say about energy problems so long as the debate starts before 10 o'clock. The Leader of


the Liberal Party used a hovercraft during the October election.
When it comes to questions of energy saving it is abundantly clear that there are faults on both sides of the House, and it is always possible to find contradictions in the policies that have been adopted. But it ill behoves Conservative Members to suggest that attempts are not being made to conserve energy supplies. Today's measures represent one such attempt. We may argue about whether this is the programme that we want, but a useful attempt has been made to save energy. We shall probably have to take stricter and sterner measures before the job is completed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) said earlier.
My hon. Friend also raised the question of minibus operators using routes covered by public transport undertakings, such as the National Bus Company, and so on. During the bus strike in my constituency at the time of the election one of the grouses of those concerned—apart from the wage issue—was over the fact that the Secretary of State had the power to allow minibus operators to operate on normal service runs and to pick up passengers at normal bus stops. They were operating as blacklegs, and that is something to which my right hon. Friend should be alerted. I hope that he will deal with the matter in due course.
There is nothing in the order that refers to the European Economic Community as such. I have been trying hard to put my finger on what troubles me about these provisions. One thing I notice is that the order might well be subjugated to the energy proposals issued by the Commission during recent months. Some measures, such as the one which we discussed last week and which has been adjourned till tomorrow, may well be overruled by other proposals. It is therefore important that the decision which the British people will take ensures that any other emergency measures introduced by the Government are not ditched as a result of the overall policy of the Common Market.
I said at the outset that I wished to say a few words about my right hon. Friend's statement. He referred to the question of having discussions with the local authorities and with other public

bodies about the use of coal and energy saving. That is fine, and I agree with it. I know that my right hon. Friend is an ex-miner and that he understands the position, but it needs to be spelled out even more forthrightly than perhaps he would have spelled it out had he had the opportunity to reply to me earlier today.
In all my right hon. Friend's discussions, I hope that he will say, "Use coal more efficiently and do all that can be done to save fuel, but do not pursue the exercise which was followed in the late 1940s and early 1950s when great pressure was put on public bodies and local authorities to utilise coal while those in the gigantic, powerful oil lobby were always waiting round the corner, like pimps waiting for prostitutes". They are waiting there again. Even though there may be an oil shortage and it may be much dearer—five times dearer, I am told—than it was 12 months ago, if my right hon. Friend pushes local authorities too hard he may push them into the trap. I want him to ensure, as I am sure he will, that the advice he gives does not lead to wrong decisions being made by public and local authorities.

11.3 p.m.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: Listening to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) gives me the impression that this is a very serious debate. It is one of the most serious debates that we could have. I am wondering what business people will think when they read reports of this debate. The impression which is given is that industry is indifferent to the use of fuel and that it uses much more of it than is required to run industry. In fact, the purpose of the order is to control the use of fuel by people who are using it carelessly.
It would seem that fuel is far too cheap. It worries me that we should be so inefficient in our use of fuel that that impression should be given.
People use power carelessly. They may switch on an electric light which they do not need and have lights blazing in four or five rooms, but that happens at night when the needs of industry are not so great. It is the daytime misuse of power that is of importance to industry.
We are going through a period when power is in short supply, but when I


listen to Opposition spokesmen I wonder whether there is an oil crisis. We have had an oil crisis for 12 months, and the Conservatives brought in restrictions which were of no avail. When I remember the three-day week and how it hurt industry I wonder whether the Conservatives are concerned about the needs of the nation or are pursuing some capitalistic policy against the Labour Government.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is in Saudi Arabia trying to ease the oil supply position, which is the main cause of the crisis. Increased oil prices such as we have had in the last 12 months cause havoc in countries which have no oil supply of their own. Many under-developed and developing countries are in a worse plight than we are.
The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost) talked about nuclear power, but he said nothing about nuclear waste, which might greatly harm future generations. In years to come I believe that nuclear power will be the world's main source of energy, but we must do more research on nuclear waste. Unless we do, we shall pass on to future generations terrible harm which we shall not ourselves experience.

Mr. Cryer: Does my hon. Friend accept that both peaceful and warlike uses of nuclear power produce fissionable material which has these dangers?

Mr. Wainwright: Yes, there is great danger unless more research is done. We talk glibly about nuclear power without considering its effects.
The debate is depressing. It suggests that we do not appreciate the need for the best utilisation of fuel and energy. Business men should be examining their plants and factories to ensure that they are run efficiently, without waste.
The Minister in reply should say how much will be saved by motorists having to keep their speed down to 60 mph on some major roads and to 50 mph on other roads. I believe that at the end of the day we shall find that very little saving will result. At the same time I believe that we should appeal to industry and to people in their everyday lives to save as much fuel as possible to ensure that Britain gets over the present fuel crisis.

11.10 p.m.

Mr. Joseph Ashton: One of the most daunting things about the statement made this afternoon by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy was that he admitted he did not know the extent of the savings that were to be made. There was a revealing piece in one of the Sunday newspapers to the effect that the Central Policy Review Staff—the "think tank" as it is sometimes called—had looked at the savings and estimated that they would be no more than a token figure. It leads one to think that this is all no more than a public relations exercise.
I ask hon. Members to cast their minds back a year to the time when the then Secretary of State for Energy and his colleagues in the Conservative Government announced a "Switch off something" campaign. That campaign cost £2½ million and resulted in very little saving in real terms. Floodlighting was turned off at football matches and there was no dog racing, but cinemas were allowed to continue to use energy. Action of that kind can only upset and antagonise the public and can sometimes result in a backlash.
This is the danger of the present action. It is an "Austerity Cripps" attitude, an attitude embodied in the phrase "We know what is good for the public. We are the nannies. You have to take this bad medicine because it is necessary for you to take it".
However, one has only to look into the matter to see how negligible the savings are. For example, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport this afternoon announced a lowering of speed limits. That action will save £10 million—£10 million out of an oil deficit of £2,500 million, or one-third of 1 per cent. Such action antagonises the motorist and makes more work for the police. The public constantly have the feeling that they must go around in sackcloth and ashes and that they are having to pay for the sins of the politicians. All this follows a week without bread and a period when there has been no sugar on the shelves. We have built up an atmosphere of despondency, and we shall get less and less public response because people feel that the politicians do not know what they are doing.
What will be the effect of the switching off of neon signs during daylight hours? What will be the effect if members of the public switch off the odd electric light or read by candlelight in bed? How does one enforce a limit of 68 degrees Farenheit? Will inspectors go into shops and public places, and if a thermometer shows 69 degrees will they prosecute the offender for wasting one degree of heat from electricity?
If the Government mean what they say and there is a need to conserve energy, why do they not have the guts—this certainly applied to the Conservative Government when a similar situation arose last year—to bring in petrol rationing? If there is a need to conserve energy, is it really right that somebody should be able to drive around all week in a Rolls-Royce with no restriction at all? In some rural constituencies where there are few buses and no stations, a worker in many instances has to have a car to get and keep a job. In these days the right to work often depends on a man having a car. That is certainly the position in Bassetlaw in regard to the Trent power station.
This is a serious matter. The "Scot Nats" are making a great deal of political capital out of it in their part of the country because they feel that workers are being penalised since an ever greater proportion of their wages is spent on simply getting to work. When they ask for a pay rise to pay for this, they are told, "You are breaking the social contract." No one says that the Government are breaking it by raising their cost of living or their costs in getting to work. It is apparently only the trade unions which are breaking the social contract by asking for more money. All of us who represent poor rural areas of working-class people know of the letters we receive asking why we do not remove the vehicle excise duty or take other action to give some sort of tax relief.
We are penalising one section of the community with these powers. We are not penalising those who ride to work on at tube train or a bus. There are no buses and no tube trains in my constituency. Travel to work depends on the petrol that is put into the car's tank at the pump. As the hon. Member for

Conway (Mr. Roberts) mentioned, more and more rural petrol stations are going out of business. We shall soon reach a situation in which a man who cannot afford a car or who cannot drive on will be on the dole. We are heading that way all the time.
If there were an emphasis by the present Government, or if there had been an emphasis a year ago by the previous Government, to make specific savings by fuel rationing, which would be fair to everyone, or perhaps by staggering hours in industry, even by only an hour or two daily, many people would be prepared to accept it. It would also help in relation to the rush hours. They would accept it if there was talk of dispensing with aircraft carriers and thus burning less fuel, or if we cut the number of flights to Paris or New York and reduced the business man's choice to six instead of 10 flights. Anyone who has taken a night flight to New York will know that they are usually only half full.
But only one section of the public is being made to have cold offices and to switch off neon signs. Their floodlit football matches are being stopped, while they cannot reach work or afford to get to work. The present Government are doing this. They are building up an atmosphere of gloom and despondency, which will continually make the man in industry fight back. It is the "thou shalt not" attitude.

Mr. Varley: Will my hon. Friend tell me where, in the energy conservation measures which I announced today, there was mention of switching off floodlights at football matches?

Mr. Ashton: When he announced these measures the Minister said that he had not finished, and that he would return with another package deal, and he may well do so. In case he does, I am warning him now that it is this sort of interference with the little pleasure and leisure of the working man that gets his back up. If there was one thing which caused the Tories to lose the February General Election, it was the switching off of television at 10.30 p.m. I stand to be corrected about what was said earlier today, and I shall check it in HANSARD, but I am fairly certain that the Minister said


he would come back later with another package. Only he knows what he will return with.
I conclude by warning my right hon. Friend, who knows working-class people as well as we do—

Mr. Varley: I thank my hon. Friend very much.

Mr. Ashton: —that he ought not to take the advice of "think tanks" or civil servants with their slide rules. He ought to remember a little more the political impact on ordinary workers who are getting a little fed up with seeing the rich getting away with using all the energy they like and the poor being rationed by price.

11.18 p.m.

Mr. John Smith: With the leave of the House, perhaps I may conclude the debate by referring to some of the points that have been raised.
Quite understandably, a great deal of the contributions have referred to the energy conservation programme announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State this afternoon. He has been criticised for what it contains, and he has been criticised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) for what it does not contain. May I make clear, however, as my right hon. Friend made clear this afternoon, that the Government will consider carefully any practical suggestions on energy conservation, from whatever quarter they come. For example, some of the matters raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) will be considered carefully by the Government.
The hon. Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson) asked how many times the authority under Section 4(2) of the Act had been used. That is the authority which permits the giving of lifts on an expense-sharing basis. The answer is that, as this is a general authority, by definition it is not known how many vehicle owners have made use of it.
The hon. Member for Conway (Mr. Roberts) raised the question of increases in the price of oil. He will know that the oil companies have recently made applications to the Price Commission, and these will have to be considered by the

commission before the Government can reach a view on them.
A number of criticisms were made of the statement made by my right hon. Friend this afternoon. Some were made by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost), who has not seen fit to wait to listen to the reply to the debate. In his and other contributions it was noticeable that, although some Opposition Members were prepared to criticise the measures proposed by my right hon. Friend, there was little inclination on their part to suggest the measures he should have taken. That was noticeable in the response of the Opposition today. There was not much in the way of constructive suggestion.
On a matter like energy conservation, on which the Government have to reach a conclusion in a balanced way, the obligation is on those who criticise what is in the statement to suggest what alternatives it should contain. Until that task is undertaken and the critics of the Government's policy shoulder that responsibility, not much credibility can be attached to the attacks they make. That point was driven home forcibly in the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Lamond).
My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley raised the question of the powers in Section 4 of the Act. The way in which the Act was framed—as my hon. Friend knows, it was introduced by the Conservative Government in 1973—was such that if we seek to perpetuate it we must perpetuate it as a package. We cannot pick and choose which of the sections between 1 and 8 we would like to continue in operation, because Section 10 of the Act makes it quite clear that it must be taken as a package. Therefore, it is not possible for the Government to say "We will have Sections 1 to 3 or Sections 5 to 7". We must have Sections 1 to 8 as a whole.
My hon. Friend will recall the purposes which I outlined in introducing the order. The Government have no intention of widening the use of the powers open to them under the Act. This is a convenient method readily to hand to fulfil some of the purposes, in particular measures for energy conservation.

Mr. Wyn Roberts: What sort of percentage increase in price is envisaged for


motor spirit when the applications come before the Price Commission?

Mr. Smith: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman seriously expects me to anticipate amongst other things the findings of the Price Commission. I will not be tempted by him into doing that.
The general lines of the Government's policy were made clear in the Budget and in my right hon. Friend's statement this afternoon. A great deal of criticism was directed at the Government by the hon. Member for New Forest about their alleged inactivity in energy conservation. The Government have today put forward a wide measure of proposals. As the right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Jenkin) conceded in an interjection, it is a proper energy-saving programme. Of course it is. That is why the right hon. Gentleman did not manage to say much by way of criticism this afternoon.
The question of energy conservation is of paramount importance to the whole nation. It should not be a matter of partisan or party political debate in the House. That is why my right hon. Friend said that he would listen to practical, constructive suggestions, from whatever quarter they emanated.
Under the Labour Government the Department of Energy has been engaged in a wide-ranging review of the problem which has led to these proposals. The Department has been active on other fronts as well. One would have thought from the criticism which has been levelled at us that the Department of Energy did nothing but concern itself with energy conservation. That is not the case. We are at the moment engaged in renegotiating with the oil companies the matter of existing licences. In the New Year we shall be introducing legislation to put into effect the Government's proposals. My right hon. Friend has taken major decisions which had been dodged for a long time on nuclear energy. He is engaged in extensive consultation on the coal industry. These are all measures designed

to make better use of our indigenous resources.
We have approached the matter from two points of view. We must develop our new resources, particularly those in the North Sea, and the Government will make sure that they are used for the benefit of and that the profits will accrue to the people of this country. We must adopt all reasonable measures to save energy and not return to an era of doom and gloom with quota cuts such as we had under the previous administration, but follow a reasonable and sensible policy of energy conservation, which will last not in a gimmicky way for six months but for four or five years.
The announcement made by my right hon. Friend is designed to achieve that effect. As he has indicated, the matter will be kept under review and if other successful measures can be adopted the Government will not be slow to do so.

Mr. Cryer: My hon. Friend has been very kind in answering the various points which have been raised in the debate. Can he assure us that the Department of Energy will prepare its own legislation? The order is for 12 months. Can he give an assurance that during that period he will prepare special legislation? I do not like to see this sort of thing under Section 4 which could be used in the way described by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner).

Mr. Smith: I take the point that this method of doing it is far from ideal. It is extremely convenient in the present circumstances, but we are giving consideration to other legislation, not only in the Department of Energy but in other Government Departments, to achieve some of the objectives which we may want to keep in force. I take my hon. Friend's point.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Fuel and Electricity (Control) Act 1973 (Continuation) Order 1974 (S.I., 1974, No. 1893), a copy of which was laid before this House on 20th November, be approved.

Orders of the Day — EDUCATION BILL

Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

11.28 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: I think that the Third Reading of this Bill would be a convenient moment for us to have a statement from the Government on a matter which was raised at both the previous stages of this Bill. It is, in short, the question of reciprocity between Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the matter of the grants with which the Bill deals.
The Minister will not, especially as I have given him notice of this point, require to be reminded of what he said in Committee. He said:
it is a matter for the Northern Ireland administration
but that his Department would be taking it up. He went on to say that it would
welcome any initiative from the Northern Ireland administration to discuss it."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee C, 26th November 1974; c. 11.]
I must say that there is something slightly ironic in the manner in which the Government seem to divide themselves by a kind of nuclear fission into separate portions. After all, the Northern Ireland administration is part of the same Government as the Department of Education and Science in Great Britain.
I hope, therefore, that although it is a little more than a week since the Minister made that statement, this procedure of internal and almost incestuous consultation will have taken place and that the essential fairness of these arrangements for reciprocal action as between the two parts of the kingdom will be recognised. I hope that the Minister will be able to make a statement on that point.

11.30 p.m.

Dr. Keith Hampson: In Committee the Opposition gave the Bill their backing, but we raised certain questions. The one to which I wish to refer now relates to the remission which would be

given to people who start off with a diploma of higher education or HND and then move on to a degree course.
We raised this matter simply because of the principle on which those courses were set up. Especially in the polytechnics, we are looking for a more flexible system of higher education, and we hope that people will be encouraged to enter the system, perhaps without having the requisite A-levels at an early age or perhaps being mature students, middle-aged men or women, and take up a diploma of higher education or national diploma course. One has in mind vocational matters—technical education and engineering—to which we have never given enough lead or encouragement.
But what will happen if we urge people to go into those courses and then they prove their potential at that level even though they have not done so before? We now have a more flexible system, and if they prove their worth we ought to encourage them to go on to the full degree course.
When we raised this matter in Committee, the Minister was most co-operative and said that he would be seeing to it in the regulations. Since then, members of the Committee have had a communication from the Minister, and although I think that it is basically in favourable terms I feel that something further should be said for the record and a commitment given thereby.
Obviously, one must agree that the HND student should not be allowed an advantage over the diploma of higher education student, and hence it would obviously not be right to give such students eligibility for a second award for a degree course which was not given to the former. But when one examines the reasons why the Department will not give remission for more than the final year, one finds just the argument that this would encourage more expenditure on student grants and possibly more numbers entering into degree courses.
I find that argument extraordinary. I see the Minister shaking his head. His letter says that anyone who is in a position whereby, as a result of taking these courses, he is not given two years' remission will not be given the full grant for the remainder of the degree course. This is a disincentive. We live in the


practical world, and many universities do not give the full two years' remission; they may give only one year. The Minister's letter specifically states that in that case students will not get the grant to cover the remainder.
I understand that the Minister may feel that this implies that the diploma is not equal to the first two years of a degree course. In that case, will he give an undertaking that he will do everything in his power to encourage—and even, if it is required, oblige—universities to make sure that they give that recognition and thus the full two years? If he does not, he must recognise that he will produce a disincentive to students to go on to degree courses, because they will have to fend for themselves for an extra year. If they are middle-aged, they may well be deprived of the income which they had in employment and they will have a hard struggle in a full-time course.
This is quite iniquitous. I have never seen any proof that the Department has worked out the numbers involved, so how can it know the commitment and cost? The Department is hedging its bets. It does not know whether it will be too great a commitment or not. The Minister's letter simply says:
Such a development could lead to a substantial increase of expenditure both on student grant and on the provision of facilities for higher education.
Given that the numbers are to be cut down and the whole thing is contracting, I feel that there is an illogicality in the Minister's statement, and we want clarification.

11.35 p.m.

Mr. William Shelton: I want to take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ripon (Dr. Hampson) and thank the Under-Secretary of State. I thought that his letter, which I imagine went to most members of the Committee, betrayed a timely sense of shame since he was clearly aware that he was disappointing most members of the Committee, because he says, in the last paragraph
I do understand that some members will be disappointed
by his letter, and earlier on he makes the same sort of remark.
The letter does not answer the suggestion that a student should be given a mandatory award from the commencement of second year of the degree course if he has gained remission for the first year. I have read with great care the reasons, and I understand them, but I do not agree with them. They seem rather typical Civil Service reasons and do not take into account the position of a student in the situation which I outlined —in other words, the student who is not getting two years' remission but is getting only one year's remission and then has to rely on a discretionary award. I am sure that the Under-Secretary has taken this point on board and will keep it very much in mind.
Finally, I cannot let this occasion pass without once again alluding to the spouse's contribution. Unfortunately, and no doubt fortuitously, the tight wording of the Financial Memorandum debarred us from enlarging on this in Committee. However, I go back to the remark made by the Minister on Second Reading, namely, that
If two students marry they continue to receive the full rate of grant on the same basis as if they were single."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th November 1974; Vol. 881, c. 843.]
He was answering a suggestion that the spouse's contribution might encourage students to live in sin. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas), who objected to the word "sin" on theological grounds. I have discussed this with some students, who tell me that it is correct that once an award or grant has been made it is not then varied, so that if two students who have hitherto received the grant cease to cohabit and become married the grant is not varied. However, they tell me that there are instances of students who deliberately do not get married until they have received the award.
Nevertheless, the main objection is a different one, namely, that with a spouse's contribution or a parental contribution the father or the husband can deny the married student the grant by being unco-operative.
I accept that the abolition of the parental contribution will cost between £20 million and £30 million, which is a


substantial sum of money, but the abolition of the spouse's contribution would not cost much more than £1 million. I think it a pity that this was not taken into account in drafting the Bill. I am sure that my sentiments will be echoed by many students throughout the country.

11.39 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): I am grateful to hon. Members who have made their points in such a reasonable way. I shall endeavour to reply to them. In answer to the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell), who raised the point that was raised by his hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux) in Committee and on Second Reading, we have been in touch with my hon. Friends in the Northern Ireland Office and they have indicated—I can confirm this—that when this legislation results in the Dip.HE and the HND courses becoming mandatory the Department in Northern Ireland will amend its regulations to make them mandatory for Northern Ireland students as well.
The Northern Ireland Department's powers in this respect are very wide, and no amendment is required to its Education Act. I put it on record that this will ensure that all students from Northern Ireland taking Dip.HE or HND courses anywhere in the United Kingdom will be eligible for mandatory awards in the same way as students who are covered by the Bill in England and Wales.
I accept the case that the hon. Member for Ripon (Dr. Hampson) made. I knew that my letter would be disappointing. I want to assure the House that we considered it carefully. Perhaps I may explain about the second mandatory awards. The Dip.HE or HND students will be eligible for the remainder of the degree courses following the first two years. I know that this does not go as far as some hon. Members would like, but we said at the outset that this was a modest Bill. We do not want to establish a pattern in which it would be normal for students taking Dip.HE courses to take four years over a degree course when other students would take three years.
The Dip.HE is intended to be no less demanding intellectually than the first two

years of courses at degree level. It is important to establish the status of the Dip.HE, and that is our judgment on the second mandatory award. The local education authorities would, of course, still have the power to make discretionary awards and such awards would be at the same rates as mandatory awards. Therefore we would hope that this would meet the need in exceptional cases—we certainly do not want four-year courses to become the pattern—which would be considered on their merits by local education authorities.

Dr. Hampson: We are worried that the eligibility therefor from the LEA's point of view depends not so much on the quality of the student but possibly on the economic circumstances of authorities. If in the next year or two they are hard up, as is likely, it is less likely that they will make awards.

Mr. Armstrong: This Bill represents a modest extension of mandatory awards. We come across a number of hard cases from quite good students who have to resit for a variety of reasons, and they have to pay their own fees. Therefore, we have to bear in mind that we do not want to establish a new pattern of a four-year course. I understand in the present economic difficulties the problems with discretionary awards, and sometimes even good students find difficulty in persuading their local authority on this score.
The present regulations do not allow HND students getting an award for an HND to go on to complete a degree afterwards. The Bill therefore provides an improvement in that it puts them on a par with Dip.HE holders and enables them to have a second mandatory award for the remainder of the degree course after the first two years. We believe this to be fair and reasonable in present circumstances.
The spouse's contribution is a matter of great controversy. The interpretation in the debate of what I said is correct. This matter is under constant review. I cannot give any assurances or hope, but I can confirm that I receive constant representation on the matter and that we are therefore unlikely to overlook the very fair points that were made in Committee and again tonight.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Will the Minister confirm or correct the figures given by his hon. Friend, namely, that the abolition of the parental contribution would cost the Exchequer £30 million? I was under the impression that the amount was very much greater.

Mr. Armstrong: The figure which is being quoted is £63 million. I think that £30 million would apply after the tax claw-back and so on. Therefore, whichever figure one uses, depending of course upon the platform on which one is speaking, one is correct.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Pendry.]

Orders of the Day — MR. H. WEINER (MISSING GOODS)

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Cordle) has sought permission to address the House sitting down, in view of a disability which we hope is temporary, and of course he may do so.

11.45 p.m.

Mr. John Cordle: It is kind of you to mention my request, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I had slipped a disc, but my back is now much better so I shall address the House in the usual way.
I wish to raise the matter of a constituent who has suffered a great deal as a result of delay by the police in connection with a theft. My constituent, Mr. Hyman Weiner, came to see me on three occasions, following which I visited the Home Office twice, though so far without having reasonable justice shown to him in respect of the case.
The matter arises from a complaint made by Mr. Weiner against a Metropolitan Police officer. I wish to raise two issues—first the facts relating to the

original complaint, and secondly the way in which the complaint was dealt with.
On Thursday, 25th February 1971 a Ford Transit van loaded with Internet radio sets valued at £2,750 was stolen at Goswell Road, London, EC1. The van belonged to Mr. Weiner, who is in business in the Bournemouth area as a wholesaler of radio sets.
On the morning of Friday 5th March 1971 Mr. Weiner was told by a trade friend that he had been offered Internet radios by certain individuals at prices substantially below the market place. Mr. Weiner was naturally pleased and excited at the news, and immediately telephoned the King's Cross Police Station, where the officers dealing with the theft were stationed, to inform them. The officer to whom he spoke said that action would be initiated at once through the local police, who would contact him. When nothing happened before lunchtime Mr. Weiner contacted the local police, who called to see him and said that they would contact King's Cross Police Station and deal with the matter forthwith.
At about 7.30 that evening Mr. Weiner was telephoned at home by the local police, who had interviewed the persons concerned in offering the radios for sale and who had been told that the radios had been purchased by them from the Harrow Watch Company in London. Mr. Weiner is sure that he immediately telephoned King's Cross Police Station and spoke to Mr. D. C. Knight, the officer in charge of the theft investigation, to inform him of the position. A discussion took place on the telephone, as a result of which Mr. Knight said that he would visit the company on Sunday morning.
Mr. Weiner's complaint was that the officer did not visit the company until Wednesday 10th March, by which time the stolen goods had been removed. It later transpired that the individuals who had tried to sell the radios at below the market rate in Bournemouth, and who had been interviewed by the local police the previous Friday, 5th March, had visited the Harrow Watch Company again on Monday 8th March, when they had been offered more of the same consignment of radios, which they had refused because they said that they knew they were stolen and that the police were


on to the company. In the circumstances it is hardly surprising that by Wednesday 10th March 1971 no stolen goods were found on the premises.
Mr. Weiner had telephoned the King's Cross Police Station twice on Monday 8th March. He telephoned twice on Tuesday 9th March and again on Wednesday 10th March in the morning in an endeavour to ascertain the result of the search which he had assumed had taken place on the Sunday. On each occasion he was told that Detective Constable Knight was either out or not available. It was only when he telephoned for the second time on Wednesday afternoon at about four o'clock in the afternoon that he was told that the premises had been searched only that morning. When he inquired of the officer to whom he was speaking the reason for the delay, he was told that it took three to four days to get a search warrant and that the matter had been dealt with as quickly as possible.
Being extremely annoyed and dissatisfied with what he had learned, Mr. Weiner immediately telephoned Scotland Yard and made a complaint. The complaint was investigated by Detective Chief Inspector Brown of Leman Street Police Station. He first met Mr. Weiner on 24th March 1971 and took a statement from him. He then interviewed the various other persons involved. On 19th April 1971 Detective Chief Inspector Brown asked Mr. Weiner to see him when he was in London to clarify some points in his statement.
The question which I now wish to pursue arises out of the behaviour of the chief inspector at the second meeting with Mr. Weiner which took place on Monday 26th April 1971. At that meeting Mr. Brown said that Mr. Knight had denied receiving a telephone call from Mr. Weiner on Friday 5th March. Mr. Weiner said that he was sure he was not mistaken. He says that the attitude of the chief inspector then changed dramatically. I can do no better than to read Mr. Weiner's statement to me which he signed:
When Detective Chief Inspector Brown found that I was resistant to the suggestion that I might have been mistaken or that I might have telephoned Knight on the Saturday morning he suddenly changed his whole demeanour. He shouted at me ' You will be torn to shreds in the witness box….' I was

completely nonplussed. His attitude had instantaneously changed from friendliness to antagonism. He was like the television character Inspector Barlow in the series 'Softly, Softly'. I felt that I was being interrogated and that I was the guilty party. I was put into a state of emotional turmoil. I felt mentally overpowered. It was not that I was in fear of Brown but that I was put into a state of complete mental blockage. I was confused and completely off balance. After much discussion Detective Sergeant Spears wrote out the statement from information that I gave him. I signed it. It was an accurate record of what I said although what I said was not an accurate record of what took place because there has never been in my mind the slightest doubt about my discussion with Knight on the Friday evening.
As a result of that statement, no further action was taken regarding the complaint. But Mr. Weiner consulted solicitors who corresponded with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. In the result, one cannot but be left with the feeling that this is a case in which something went wrong with the police investigation of an offence. It might have been incompetence or it might have been corruption. The matter does not appear to have been adequately and fairly investigated.
I ask that an independent inquiry be established by the Secretary of State for the Home Department to investigate the facts and the circumstances of this matter. Mr. Weiner has suffered a great deal. He has been constantly worried about the whole issue and he has had no compensation for his loss.

11.55 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Dr. Shirley Summerskill): I regret the temporary disability of the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Cordle) and wish him a speedy recovery. I appreciate that he sent me notice of the points he wished to raise in this debate. However, I am surprised that he has decided to raise this matter in the House after the very full investigations which have been made into his constituent's complaints and the great care which has been taken by my predecessors at the Home Office to explain the situation.
The basic facts of Mr. Weiner's case which have been described by the hon. Gentleman are not in dispute. There are two main questions at issue. The first is why, if Mr. Weiner gave the name of the Harrow Watch Company to Detective Constable Knight on Friday 5th March,


it was not until Wednesday 10th March, that the premises were searched. The second is whether Mr. Weiner's complaint about this initial delay was properly investigated.
On the first question, the hon. Gentleman said that Mr. Weiner was telephoned at home at about 7.30 p.m. on 5th March by the local police at Boscombe and was given the name of the Harrow Watch Company, London, E.1. Mr. Weiner is sure that he immediately telephoned King's Cross Police Station and passed this information on to Detective Constable Knight.
Both the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis and the Chief Constable of the Dorset and Bournemouth Constabulary were asked for reports on Mr. Weiner's complaint about the subsequent delay. The Commissioner's report said that Detective Constable Knight had been off duty from 8.30 p.m. on Friday 5th March, until 2 p.m. on Saturday 6th March and could not therefore have spoken to Mr. Weiner between those times. No other police officer at King's Cross Police Station had any record or recollection of Mr. Weiner passing on the relevant address.
According to Detective Constable Knight, the first time he heard the name of the Harrow Watch Company was in the evening of Tuesday 9th March, when the detective constable dealing with the case at Boscombe told him by telephone that the stolen radios were believed to have come from the Harrow Watch Company, Harrow Place. Detective Constable Knight received this telephone call after 9.30 p.m. when it was too late to take any action that day. The next morning, after some preliminary inquiries to establish the exact address of the premises—their number had not been given—Detective Constable Knight applied for a search warrant and a search was carried out in the early afternoon. None of Mr. Weiner's radios was found.
I mentioned two reports on this matter. The second report, from the Chief Constable of Dorset and Bournemouth, said that the detective constable dealing with the case in Boscombe had not obtained the name of the Harrow Watch Company until 9 p.m. on Friday 5th March during an interview that was not concluded until about 11 p.m. The interviewing officer

had no record or recollection of telephoning the information received to Mr. Weiner that night.
The Boscombe police then tried to establish the address of the Harrow Watch Company by making inquiries at Bishops-gate Police Station, in whose area it was believed to be, and of directory inquiries. When these inquiries proved unsuccessful, it was thought probable that the informants had been lying. They were therefore interviewed again on 9th March, when they gave another name under which the firm might be trading and also its telephone number. It was at this point that the Boscombe police telephoned Detective Constable Knight who, as I have already said, then made immediate inquiries and had the premises searched.
I do not wish to give the impression that Mr. Weiner's account of his telephone conversations with the police was deliberately inaccurate. When a number of conversations are held with different people on several consecutive days, it is very easy to mistake exactly what was said by whom to whom. The London police could equally have been wrong in their recollection if it had not been that telephone conversations at police stations are carefully recorded and that the records and recollections of police officers in two different stations in two separate forces all provide evidence to suggest that Mr. Weiner was mistaken.
I now turn to the second point at issue, which is whether Detective Chief Inspector Brown properly conducted his investigation of Mr. Weiner's complaint. Detective Chief Inspector Brown first interviewed Mr. Weiner about his complaint on 24th March 1971, when Mr. Weiner stated categorically that he had spoken to Detective Constable Knight between 7.30 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Friday 5th March. When the subsequent inquiries suggested that this was not possible, Detective Chief Inspector Brown saw Mr. Weiner again on 26th April and explained that the recorded actions of neither Detective Constable Knight nor the Boscombe police officer supported his story.
Mr. Weiner then made a second statement saying that the telephone conversation with Detective Constable Knight may have taken place on either Friday night or Saturday morning. Mr. Weiner knew


from what Detective Chief Inspector Brown had said that Detective Constable Knight had gone off duty at 8.30 p.m. on the Friday evening but did not know that he had remained off duty until 2 p.m. the next day. It is this second statement that the hon. Gentleman, on Mr. Weiner's behalf, suggests was obtained by such an antagonistic approach that Mr. Weiner hardly knew what he was doing.
I think that it is perhaps relevant to mention here that when the solicitors who were consulted by Mr. Weiner after this second interview wrote to the Commissioner of Police on 11th June 1971 they gave no indication at all that undue pressure had been exerted on Mr. Weiner, nor did they make any complaint about the behaviour of Detective Chief Inspector Brown, although specific reference was made to the second interview. It was not until January 1972, when Mr. Weiner engaged a second firm of solicitors, that he made the allegation against Detective Chief Inspector Brown that has been quoted by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East.
That allegation was fully investigated by a detective chief superintendent from a different division in the Metropolitan Police who found the complaint unsubstantiated. Both Detective Chief Inspector Brown and the detective sergeant who accompanied him to take down Mr. Weiner's statement denied that there was any shouting, undue pressure or aggression, although both agreed that Detective Chief Inspector Brown had been firm in pointing out that the facts as supplied by the police did not support Mr. Weiner's recollection.
The hon. Gentleman suggests that something went sadly wrong with the police investigation of an offence, either through incompetence or corruption, and that the matter does not appear to have been adequately and fairly investigated. There is no doubt that there was a delay between the time that the name of the Harrow Watch Company was first mentioned and the time its premises were searched. The inquiries made show that

this was caused by the efforts of the Boscombe police to ensure that their information was correct and reliable before they asked the London police to apply for a search warrant. I am sure the hon. Member would agree that the police should not apply for and execute a search warrant without being sure of their ground.
Both the Commissioner of Police and the Chief Constable of Dorset and Bournemouth were satisfied, after what I can assure the hon. Member were very full and detailed inquiries, that there was no reason to believe that the delay was deliberate. The only doubt raised about these inquiries was in connection with the behaviour of Detective Chief Inspector Brown, and the Commissioner was unable to pursue the allegation against him in the absence of any disinterested witness. Even if it had been proved, however, it would hardly have affected the essential point, that Mr. Weiner's recollection of his telephone conversation with Detective Constable Knight must have been mistaken.
Finally, the hon. Gentleman refers to the possibility of having an independent inquiry into this matter. He may recall that my right hon. Friend announced in July this year an outline scheme for introducing an independent element into the procedure for investigating complaints against the police. We are discussing these proposals with representatives of the police service and the local authority associations with a view to working out a fully-agreed scheme. Legislation will then be needed to put it into effect. Meanwhile the investigation of complaints under Section 49 of the Police Act 1964 remains entirely the responsibility of the chief officer of police concerned, and in this particular case there is no reason to believe that the relevant investigations have not been fully and properly conducted.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes past Twelve o'clock.